Storytelling with The Very Hungry Caterpillar™

Start by having students divide up into story investigation teams, I usually try to have no more than four in a group. I use the large book posters from the World of Eric Carle Bulletin Board set. I allow each group to choose a book to investigate. The set features the following stories The Very Hungry Caterpillar™; The Very Lonely Firefly; The Very Busy Spider; The Very Quiet Cricket; The Grouchy Ladybug; Mister Seahorse; Panda Bear; Panda Bear What Do You See?; Brown Bear, Brown What Do You See?; The Mixed-Up Chameleon; Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? They read the books together as a team. Once they have read and reviewed the story in their groups I have them come and identify the characters from their story. The bulletin board set contains several of the characters from the books. They can select which ones come from their book and take them back to their group. They use the bulletin board strips included in the set to make character hats, each student has to describe the character they select. For stories like The Very Hungry Caterpillar you could have the students use the different stages of the caterpillar to create their hats. they can describe how he was different during each stage.The hats are made by simply gluing the character onto the front and stapling the strip to fit the child's head. The teams can work together to complete their story map they work together to identify characters, setting, problem and solution. They can use the bubbles to describe in pictures or sentences the details of the story sequencing the events in their own words. Download the Free Story Map Printable here! The Very Hungry Caterpillar Story Telling magnets come in handy to visibly show how to sequence the events through pictures. You can do this as a whole group example in order to model story sequencing. You can give team index cards to create their own story sequence magnets on, just add a little magnet to the back to create their own storytelling set. To wrap up I have each group present their story to the class, identifying the important story elements and giving details about each character. The large standouts are available only for a few stories but they are fun to display around the room as you explore the amazing world of Eric Carle. My students were so excited to learn more about Eric Carle's books some were old favorites some have become new favorites. We finished our story investigation with a cute craft from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar Craft Kits come all ready to assemble, no prep needed. So cute and efficient for today's classrooms. Which Eric Carle book will become your new favorite?