The kids are Eric Carle fans. We haven’t read all of his books, but love the few that we have so far. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug, Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and Mister Seahorse.

Naturally when we received the The Very Hungry Caterpillar game from the good folks at The Groovy Giraffe, the kids were excited to play.

The rules are straightforward. The goal is for each caterpillar (represented by a little box) to collect a set number of fruits, picnic food, and yes of course the leaf. The first Caterpillar to collect the required foods and complete the round wins - or gets to morph into a beautiful butterfly.

Easy peasy?

The kids were okay to spin the dial and count the spaces that they could move their caterpillar along the board. I had to supervise JJ a bit to make sure he counted the spaces right.

The tricky thing is that your caterpillar has to land at all of the three big circles by spinning the dial. So if you miss any of these circles, it means you miss your chance to stop and “eat” (collect the required food) and you’ll have to go another round.

To simplify things for Vera and JJ, I just allowed them to land on these circles no matter what number they had spun on the dial.

What we liked:

• the familiarity of the game and objects
• the opportunity for the kids to practise counting and turn-taking
• the simple objective - to feed the caterpillar so it could turn into a butterfly
• suitable for young ones like JJ

What we didn’t enjoy as much:

• having to go another round if we missed our chance to eat {also due to the kids’ attention span at this stage…)

After a few days of playing the game, I decided to allow the kids to make up their own rules. Here’s where it got interesting…

Version V
Vera naturally took the lead and guided us how to play the game. She made us all hop into one of the big circles, with the power to decide which foods we prefer to eat. I chose the fruits circle.

Then, we had to quickly gobble up the right foods. Until our tiny caterpillar box is filled to the brim. (Yes, very hungry caterpillars we all were… )

Then when we all had our fill, Vera started throwing the leftover fruits and yummy picnic foods all over the game board. It was raining cakes, apples and strawberries! So of course our caterpillars went to take cover…Because our caterpillars were so filled with food, they couldn’t continue walking along the board so none of them reached the end goal. (Sad.)

Version JJ
Then I asked JJ how he’d like to play the game.

He said we had to feed him like a caterpillar(!) We made him lie down while Vera and I piled on the food, fruit and leaf cards on his belly. He was so tickled he kept squirming.

GIVEAWAY!

The kind folks at Groovy Giraffe have sponsored one set of The Very Hungry Caterpillar game to give away. To join in, just enter via the rafflecopter app below! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Terms & conditions:

• Winners to self-collect at The Groovy Giraffe (Everton Park) or pay $5 for shipping, and there will be no exchange of products or conversion to store credits.
  Winners will be contacted by The Groovy Giraffe.

• Note: There are affiliate links in this post, meaning that if you do make a purchase, a small commission comes to me. But it’s at no additional cost to you!