Eric Carle Author Study; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Writing/Craft lesson; K/1 Classroom; We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and talked about the four stages a caterpillar goes through in it's lifetime. We also did a lesson on adjectives (describing words) the day before. I gave the children a sheet of paper with four picture boxes and four sets of lines on them. The prompt written on the first set of lines was "I start as a...", the second set of lines was "I turn into a...", the third set of lines stated "Then I spin..." and the fourth set of lines read "Finally I am a...". Students were directed to write the four stages of a caterpillar in their correct order (egg, caterpillar, coccoon, butterfly) but they had to include at least one adjective for each prompt. The kids had a lot of fun picking their adjectives and did a great job coloring pictures to go with each. I glued these four picture/writing sets onto a piece of construction paper. The next activity was to do the craft part. I gave each child four coffee filters. One cut out into the shape of a leaf, one cut out into the shape of a caterpillar, one cut out into the shape of a coccoon, and the last was just a full coffee filter. The students were to color, with marker, the four coffee filters. I then went around and sprayed each with water so the colors ran together and mixed a little bit (looked very similar to Eric Carle's illustrations). When the coffee filters were dry, I pasted a small white egg onto each leaf and glued the leaves next to the first stage on the construction paper, the caterpillar next to the second stage, and the coccoon next to the third stage. I then bunched the full coffee filter together in the middle and taped it to resemble a butterfly and glued that picture next to the fourth and final stage. These were so cute when finished and the kids loved seeing how the water made the marker colors mix together!