In Junior Infants we just love Eric Carle’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have had such fun reading the book, and we have learned so many different things with some help from this story.

We learned to sequence and order the days of the week, and even did this in pairs (with no help from Ms Murphy) using Hungry Caterpillar days of the week cards. We played Maths games – matching up numbers to the different fruits the caterpillar ate in the story. We learned about the
lifecycle of a butterfly, and even wrote and drew our own lifecycle diagrams. We discussed healthy eating in SPHE, and made (and ate) our own hungry caterpillar fruit salad – it was delicious. (see below for our recipe). We even made our very own caterpillar mobiles which are now hanging up in our classroom. And finally in groups we made a big huge fat caterpillar and giant fruit, which we have hung up in the corridor outside our classroom, so everyone in the school can share in the story.

Junior Infant’s Hungry Caterpillar Fruit Salad

You will need

  • 1 apple
  • 2 pears
  • 3 plums
  • 4  strawberries
  • 5 oranges (we used mandarin oranges in our salad)

Method

1)      Wash and peel all of the fruit

2)      Mix the fruit together in a big bowl

3)      Squeeze the juice of 1 orange over the fruit

4)      Serve into bowls – eat and enjoy!