1. Choose a piece of coloured paper and using your scissors cut a rectangular strip 1inch by 5inch long.
2. Take your strip of paper and fold it in half. Push down hard to make a firm crease. Your paper should look like a smaller rectangle. Now open it back up to reveal a firm crease in the centre.
3. Now, take the outside edge of paper and fold to the centre crease line. Do this to both sides of your strip.
4. Repeat step 3 and fold the sides into the centre line again.
5. Now fold your strip in half and push firmly to make firm creases.
6. Take your scissors and cut off the corners of your folded strip. You should end up having an oval shape.
7. Unfold your strip and manipulate it to make an arch shape. Either end of your caterpillar should be flat to support it standing up alone.
8. Use the coloured markers to decorate your caterpillar and give it a face. Be as creative as you like! Now let’s get racing!

Lets race!

1. Grab your large piece of paper and use your ruler and a marker to create a race-track. Draw a column for each player and add a start and finish line with the words so the players know where to start their caterpillars.
2. Now grab your caterpillar and a straw. Place the caterpillar on the start line and 3,2,1, BLOW! Use your straw to blow on the back of your caterpillar to make him hump and move along.

Who is the winner? Did you like this activity? Did it work for you? Let us know how you went in the comments below.

Note: I had an 11 year old and 3 year old play this game together. Both really enjoyed creating the caterpillars, but the 3 year old struggled with making his caterpillar move with the straw. Reflecting on this I think perhaps a wider straw would have been a little more efficient.