The Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Party Ideas

For my son, Joshua’s, 1st birthday, I decided to go with The Very Hungry Caterpillar (by Eric Carle) theme. He was growing like a weed and loved to eat, so that seemed the most fitting! This was a pretty easy party to pull together. I basically just followed the book to a tee.

I got extremely lucky with this party and was able to get pretty much everything I needed to decorate, from the Dollar Store. I was most excited to have found these green ovalish shaped bowls there. They resembled leaves, in my opinion, and that was perfect! I purchased 8 of them. They also had a matching food tray with dividers, which was exactly what I needed. I printed out all of the pages of the book, onto 4” x 6” cardstock and used those on my themed food table. I found the stuffed caterpillar from Kohls (one of the Kohl’s Cares For Kids items) and purchased the Lamaze Firefly from Amazon (Looked like the Eric Carle Butterfly to me).

Along our fence, I tied 6 green balloons and one large red balloon in a row, to make the caterpillar. I made the eyes, nose and antennas from cardstock and taped them on.

Like I said, for this party, I just followed all the pages of the book. They are as follows: In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on the leaf. One Sunday morning, the warm sun came up and – pop! – out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar. He started to look for some food. On Monday he ate through one apple, but he was still hungry. On Tuesday he ate through two pairs, but he was still hungry. On Wednesday he ate through three plums, but he was still hungry. On Thursday he ate through four strawberries, but he was still hungry. On Friday he ate through five oranges, but he was still hungry. On Saturday he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. That night, he had a stomache. The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through one nice green leaf, and after that he felt much better. Now he wasn’t hungry anymore – and he wasn’t a little caterpillar anymore. He was a big fat caterpillar. He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself. He stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out, and…

He was a beautiful butterfly.