‘Wooly Caterpillar Game’ - Caterpillars in the Food Chain

This activity far exceeded my expectations. We found this activity from Learning Through Landscapes - an amazing charity who strive to get children connecting with nature, be more active and to be more engaged with their learning. You will find a huge range of activities for many ages there- its worth checking out!

We adapted this activity for in the house and for only Jared and I to play.

After I cut up various colours of wool ( used one bright colour ) , we split them between us. Jared placed his around his room ; sticking out of places , and I did the same in livingroom . Then we took it in turns to pretend we were wee blue tits and go find each other’s ‘caterpillars’.

Jared loved it , he was running about the hall pretending to be a blue tit ‘flying’ around with a caterpillar in his mouth .

Now this was great fun itself as Jared loves ‘hide & seek’ games, but the fact it stressed the importance of caterpillars in the food chain; in a way that my pre-schooler could understand was amazing .

Jared learnt that one blue tit might need to find 500 caterpillars in one day (obviously he didn’t understand the number, but he could grasp it was a lot!)

By hunting our caterpillars, he also worked out that the bright coloured ones were easier to spot , hence why some caterpillars use camouflage in the wild so they are harder to spot!

“The birds needs to eat hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of caterpillars” - Jared

Jared then started to ask me questions about the food chain itself - which was great. I think the idea that the blue tit needs to eat all those caterpillars to give to his babies, made it okay, and he didn’t mind at all that the sparrow hawk then needs to eat blue tits for their baby chicks !

Funnily he asked me what animals do giraffes eat? So we even got onto carnivores and herbivores for the first time.

I can’t recommend this activity enough; and if you don’t have wool, strips of coloured paper/old magazines will do .

Click here to get the ‘wooly caterpillar’ activity sheet - it is easy to adapt to your child’s age range and can be played indoors or out!

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