Do you love “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” ?

It is a big big favourite in our house, so when I saw these cute caterpillars made with buttons via pinterest I knew we’d have to make them look like The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Button Caterpillar

Only problem is I didn’t want to use that many buttons, they’re not the cheapest and although we could have re-used them after for another project, I decided to abandon the idea.

Until I remembered I had bought these round wheel looking pasta shapes from an Italian deli {our supermarket doesn’t sell them!} for another craft quite a while ago and they were just sitting in the cupboard! 
So I dyed them blue and green {find out how to dye your own pasta here – it is SUPER easy!}
and we set about to make our own Very Hungry Caterpillars!

 You will need:
Dyed pasta wheels in blue and green {or any other colours you like}
A Green pipe cleaner
A red button
A little purple pipe cleaner
Sticky dot stickers {i got ours from the newsagents}
Thead the button onto the pipe cleaner like this – push through one button hole and then back through another button hole and then twist the pipe cleaner around itself so the button is secure. This also makes it super easy for the kids to thread the pasta on.
 Twist on some antennae :o}
Now the kids can start threading their pasta!
This is a great fine motor activity for the kiddos, having to thread the pipe cleaner through the middle of the pasta wheels. For older kiddos you can ask them to try and do a pattern and keep to it.
Once your kiddo has filled the pipe cleaner with their pasta wheels, just secure off the end by twisting the pipe cleaner around the last piece of pasta wheel.
Now it is time for the eyes :o}
The green of the pipe cleaner becomes the nose of your caterpillar.
Use the yellow stickers dots and cut out an oval shape and stick on.
Then cut smaller ovals out of the green sticker dots and pop those on top.
Ta-da!! Looking super cute, huh!

My kiddos had a ball with their caterpillars, making beds for them and pushing them around in the pram. Of course they also had to eat their way through our “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” books a million times :o}

Just note that the pasta wheels are not super resilient so they do smash as pasta tends to do when they hit the floor.

x

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