You might remember reading The Hungry Caterpillar when you were smaller, the story about the caterpillar who ate a mountain of food and turned into a beautiful butterfly.
Making your own Hungry Caterpillar is easy and fun! Emily made hers out of stockings and grass seed.
What you need:
Potting mix
Grass seed
A knee-high stocking
Decorations
How to make it:
Mix the grass seed into the soil mixture and pour into the stocking.
When the stocking is just about full, section it off with rubber bands or twine to make the caterpillar shape.
Tie off the end.
Put your caterpillar in water for ten minutes to give it a good soak then put it in a plastic bag overnight.
Take it out of the bag the next day and add some eyes and caterpillar antennae – pipe cleaners are good for that. Emily’s caterpillar has very googly eyes!
Leave in a sunny spot.
Water your caterpillar every couple of days and watch it get hairier and hungrier over the next few weeks!
A few surprising facts about caterpillars
A caterpillar has only one job – to eat!
They eat a huge amount for several weeks and will eat 27,000 times their body weight during this life phase.
Caterpillars can increase their body mass by as much as 1,000 times or more!
When a caterpillar hatches from its egg, it eats the eggshell.
Muscle man! A caterpillar has up to 4,000 muscles in its body (us humans have around 629)
Caterpillars have 12 eyes but don’t have great eyesight!
Caterpillars have only 6 real legs – the others are called prolegs, which helps them hold on and climb.