Educational, Yet still Fun (The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle)

Member Name: Groovee

Product:	The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle
Date:	18/03/04 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: educational with out realising

Disadvantages: You'll read it over and over and over and over again

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, is one of my Favourite stories and great for a pre-school project.

It starts with a little egg on a leaf which turns into a caterpillar. The caterpillar gets hungry and on the first day eats just 1 thing An Apple. The next day he is still hungry and so eats 2 pears and then 3 plums on the 3rd day and 4 strawberries on the 4th day to the caterpillar eating 5 oranges on the 5th day. On the 6th day he wakens up and is extremely hungry and eats his way through various foods, such as cherry pie, a cup cake, Swiss cheese, salami, a lollipop, ice cream, watermelon, chocolate cake, pickle and sausage. He ends up a big Fat caterpillar Then on Sunday he just ate a leaf! I think he was feeling a bit full by this point. The food all has holes in it which is great for little ones to stick their fingers through. The holes show just where the caterpillar ate the food.

I always find this part gets the child or children interacting with you as you read the story. It encourages them to recognise the different foods which the caterpillar eats. It also encourages their counting skills. They also learn the days of the week in the proper order. It usually at this part of the book that the children shout out the story before you have turned the page. Children often memorise the story while you are reading it and are able to tell you about it either the next time you read it or straight after the book they want to talk about it.

The Caterpillar then builds his "house" the cocoon, and falls asleep. Then after a short while wakens up and has turned into a butterfly.

The book is ideal for showing the life cycle of the caterpillar and helps a child to understand that it starts with an egg which turns into a caterpillar, then the cocoon stage followed by turning into a butterfly. I often used this in my spring projects where we were talking about new lives with flowers growing, baby animals being born e
tc. It fitted in well, but it was a book which the children would ask for over and over as they loved it. Some of them loved the idea of being able to eat so much junk food on the Saturday.

The pictures in the book are simple and easy for a child to understand. They always seemed boring from my view as a child, but I loved the story. The pictures are a dull colour rather than the bright ones which we have become accustomed to in today's books for children. But this book has been around since before me or my hubby was born. Yet it is a classic in children's stories.

We did the story for our wall display one time in the nursery and got each child to talk about the shapes and the colours. We counted out all the different foods which the caterpillar ate. And we also talked about how the butterfly is symmetrical. So from this book the child gains mathematical knowledge, literacy skills and science through the life cycle.

The story is ideal for any age and I found that Eilidh liked this from about 16 months and in the last few days Murray has taken a great liking to the book as well. It can be bought in hard back which is a board book, which is ideal for a younger child or it can be bought in paperback. Some bookshops also sell the book in either hard back or paper back with a caterpillar toy with it. It average cost for the books it about £4.99 or £6.99 with the caterpillar. Quite often some book shops will have offers on such as 3 for the price of 2 which is a great way to buy children's books.

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