Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. {Virtual Book Club for Kids}

Bill Martin Jr. is September’s featured author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. We created activities to go along with Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Lois Ehlert. We have caterpillar matching, memory, and a race game to go along with the book.

Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr.

Ten Little Caterpillars is a great book for learning about caterpillars. Each page is beautifully illustrated by Lois Ehlert. She likes to label her pictures. On one page, you’ll find a spider, monarch eggs, monarch chrysalis, and milkweed plant labeled. As you read the book, talk to your child about where the caterpillars are found. They like to eat leaves, so you’ll find them near plants, but each caterpillar likes different plants. You can also talk to your child about the animals in the caterpillar habitats. Some of them are caterpillar predators, like the hen, the fish, the toad, the wren, and others.

At the end of the book you’ll find the numbers 1-10 with the names of each of the caterpillars talked about in the book. There’s also information about what the caterpillars eat and what type of butterfly or moth they become. For us, a reading of this book is not complete without counting all of the caterpillars at the end.

Caterpillar Matching

The back of the book has all ten caterpillar species and their butterfly or moth match. You can learn the names of each of the caterpillars and butterflies/moths. I traced the ten caterpillars in the back of the book. Then, I made a few copies with my printer.

Aiden and I looked at the caterpillars in the book and then colored our caterpillars accordingly. He decided what parts of the caterpillars he wanted color and had me color in the rest. We colored two sets of caterpillars. {You could color one set and then make a color copy.}

I cut out the caterpillars. Then, Aiden and I glued the caterpillars onto cardstock. We now had two sets of ten little caterpillar cards.

The first thing I had Aiden do was to match all of the caterpillars. He spread them out onto the floor and matched them up.

Caterpillar Memory

Using the 2 sets of ten little caterpillar cards we made, we played a game of caterpillar memory. We mixed up the cards and placed them all face down into 5 rows/4 columns. Aiden flipped two cards and checked for a match. If the cards didn’t match, he flipped them back over. If the cards did match, he placed them together off to the side. We played this game a few times in a row.

Caterpillar Race

The caterpillar race is also a matching game, but it gets kids moving.

Directions for play:

Place 2 sets of ten little caterpillar cards face up on one side of the room and a box on the other side of the room.
Have your child start on the side of the room with the box.
When you say go, have your child run across the room and find a matching pair of caterpillars.
Bring the matched pair back across the room and place them in the box.
Continue until all matches are found.

To set up the game again, I had Aiden take one card at a time and run it to the other side of the room. He placed it on the ground face up and returned for another card. Aiden liked running to set up the game just as much as running to find matches.