Make your own Caterpillar Family | Kid’s Crafts

Robin wasn’t feeling well so stayed home from camp a few weeks ago. By lunch time she was feeling good again (of course) and was looking for something to do to keep busy for the afternoon. I honestly can’t remember who came up with this idea, her or I, but either way we decided we wanted to make a family of caterpillars (maybe we saw a caterpillar outside or on T.V.?). This is an old-school craft that I can remember doing as a kid. I’m sure it’s all over the web, but here’s our take on it.

By: Kimberly

Step 1: Scour your recycling for egg cartons or empty the ones you have in the fridge. Luckily I had two cartons in the fridge (so all the eggs were moved to a bowl).

Step 2: Remove the top of the carton and cut the bottom in half. This gives you the body for your caterpillars. You can also further cut them down to make smaller bodies (for the “brother”, “sister” and “baby”).

Step 3: Pull out your paints or markers (or glitter glue, crayons, stickers, etc.) and decorate your caterpillars. Robin was intent on painting hers all the same colour (purple is her favourite) but I was finally able to convince her that it would be much easier to tell them apart if they were different colours. This was an excellent activity to take up time. Five caterpillars is a lot to paint so she even took a few breaks and then came back to finish her painting. Our paint dried fairly quickly, but you might have to use a blow dryer to speed it up if your little one is anxious to finish the craft.

Step 4: Glue on eyes, or draw some on if you don’t have googly eyes (“googly” eyes can be bought at any craft store or in the craft section of most big box stores like Walmart, which is where we got ours).

 Step 5: Draw or paint on a smile

Brooke got in on the action too. She’s holding tape, but we did not actually use tape at any point for this craft.

Step 6: Make antennas using pipe cleaners. I used a wooden skewer from the kitchen to poke holes through the caterpillars heads. The pipe cleaners were cut in half and then we could insert them through the holes. I made a knot at the bottom so they couldn’t be pulled back through again and then Robin made the loops at the top of the antennas. She chose purple for all the caterpillars and I gave up trying to argue.

We let the glue and paint finish drying and Robin then spent the next week (yes, I’m serious, a week), playing with these caterpillars. She’s really into “families” right now so these were perfect for that and I have say that I like that she took a break from her dollhouse with its perfectly shaped, plastic family and got a little creative with these guys. I remember doing the same thing with my dad’s fishing lures when I was a kid (minus the hooks of course!).

We ended up making them a house out of a diaper box, which we still need to finish decorating. The only photo I have is from our trip up north to cottage country two weeks ago. We couldn’t leave the caterpillars behind.

We definitely need to do something about the giant baby on the front door! It’s on the list…