With the Kids

Meet Our Bead Caterpillar Pets

These cute little caterpillars are currently climbing and inching their way all around our house. With just 2 supplies, make your own simple and perfect little crafty pet.

Supplies for Bead Caterpillar Pets:

  • pipe cleaners
  • 10-20 assorted (pony) beads for each caterpillar – big enough for a pipe cleaner to fit through

1. Cut your pipe cleaner to your desired length. Our red caterpillar has been cut in half and the purple caterpillars are 1/3 of a pipe cleaner.

2. Place on your beads in any order or color combination you’d like. You can look at some photos of caterpillars and try to match what real caterpillars look like. (These pony beads are the perfect beads for pipe cleaners. I bought this set for $10 in the craft department and it’s been worth every penny. We’ve done so many projects with them and it seems never ending. And it’s great to have so many colorful beads on hand.)

3. Leave 1/4 of an inch at the bottom and 1 inch at the top of pipe cleaner. Curl up both ends to help the beads stay on.

Now bend your caterpillar in the center to give him or her the look of inching along. Who knows, maybe it will turn into a beautiful butterfly soon.

24 comments

  1. I am thinking that I will use this activity for a college class that I am taking and I need to do a presentation on fine motor skills. I think this is a great little project, but for what age levels is this? I need to state that on my lesson plan.

    1. How fun! This is something you could easily start with a 2 year old. Those pony beads are big enough that children that young could start to practice adding them to pipe cleaners! And the age goes up to 8 yrs or 10. Kids can get really creative with these, building with them at an older age.

  2. My granddaughter loved this idea and although we did not have these coloured pipe cleaners, she insisted on making a few caterpillars. They turned out quite well and she could not wait showing them to her mother when she came back from her job.

    Such a nice, easy craft you shared here. Thank you.

  3. Yay! Perfect craft for today. We looked through our craft book all morning looking for something to do, but for almost every project, we were missing a necessary item or two. This has been a fun afternoon project for my 3-year old daughter and 6-year old son who both happen to love caterpillars.

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