Crafty Moms Share: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party Ideas

Disclosure: Penguin Kids gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Penguin Kids challenged me this month. They sent me some popular books and asked me to come up with some birthday parties themed on the books and/or series and start a Pinterest Board for the party. Really they challenged me to do any favorite books as the theme. We posted one on My Garden by Kevin Henkes. They sent me the ever popular The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Now I do not know a parent or teacher who works with young children who has not heard of this story. Gymboree even sells a line of baby clothes based on this and others of Eric Carle's books. Hazel loves this book. Her kindergarten classroom started with The Very Hungry Caterpillar theme and the cubbies are still labeled with caterpillars and butterflies from the theme. Now Hazel is very excited to own a copy of the book since she loves the story and can pretty much read/remember it on her own. She loved the idea of a party with this theme.

Source: Shindigz

For any party you need some tableware and decorations. Shindigz offers a line of The Very Hungry Caterpillar tableware and personalized banners and more. They actually have packages where you can have a photograph on the plates and such as well. For easy planning you could shop there for everything from invitations, decorations, favors and more. I, of course, like to do a bit on my own. There are so many ideas that go with The Very Hungry Caterpillar out there, I wanted to come up with my own. We decided to make a craft. Since Hazel has learned a bit about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly when we raised caterpillars, I thought we would do a craft with the life cycle.

I made a printable of two leaves, a butterfly and strip to be the chrysalis.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8PVW7zBWFxsRjlKUnRSekdOQ2c/view?usp=sharing

After cutting out the objects, Hazel glued tissue paper and crepe paper on to the leaves. I trimmed the paper after she finished.

Then she rolled a piece of light yellow tissue paper into a ball to be the egg and glued it onto one of the leaves. Then we took a clothespin and two small magnets (that I received from Shindigz to review) and glued the leaf on to it. With the other leaf Hazel glued on a red pom pom and a some green pom poms. She added eyes and pipe cleaner antennae to the red pompom to be the caterpillar. Then we glued it onto a clip with the magnets on it. For the chrysalis we rolled the strip of paper and glued it. Then Hazel wrapped it on white crepe paper until she was happy with it. You could also use twine, tissue paper, yarn, etc. We glued this onto a clip with magnets on it. Finally she colored the butterfly and we glued it to a clip with magnets as well.

Now we have fun clips for our refrigerator that will hold her artwork better. And to me it would be a fun and pretty easy craft to do at a party with slightly older kids.

With any themed party you want to continue the theme with food, decorations, activities, favors and crafts. Since I am not actually throwing the party, I asked my fellow Kid Blogger Network (KBN) bloggers for their ideas. Here are some of them. For even more, check out my Very Hungry Caterpillar Pinterest Board. You can also use many of the ideas we had for our Butterfly Party with this theme.