How to Throw an Eric Carle Baby Shower or Party

Eric Carle's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an adorable story with great illustrations. Anyone who is a fan of Eric Carle would consider this a favorite. It is also such a great theme that you could use for a boy or a girl birthday party or baby shower. What's fun about using this as a theme is that you can concentrate on the caterpillar for boys and with girls you can also add butterflies to make it even more girlie! The bright colors of the illustrations and the wonderful foods in the book make it a super fun theme for a party!

Invitations:
There are a couple of websites where you can buy Eric Carle invitations for your party but it can be just as fun to make your own. I had helped throw a baby shower with The Very Hungry Caterpillar as the theme and made my own invitations. There were over 50 invitations to make so I made simple 5x7 cards on the computer using caterpillar images that I found on the Internet. Although you could get creative and make the invitations look like caterpillars. Use a red circle for the face and draw in the eyes and then attach a couple of green circles to the red one to make it look like the caterpillar in the book. On the green circles you can put all the party information. These are very adorable if you have the time to make them.

Games:
Create word a word scramble using all the foods that the hungry caterpillar eats in the book. If you are using another Eric Carle book for your theme use information from the story as words for your scramble or do a scramble of a list of Eric Carle books.

If you were doing a children's birthday party you could play pin the wings on the butterfly or have a large caterpillar and see how many foods a child can pin to its body. Decorate or make caterpillars or butterflies at the party.

Party Food:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is all about food so showcase some of those wonderful foods in the book at the party. Set out bowls of fruit such as apples and pears, which could be not only decorations but also healthy snacks for the party. Guests can fill their goody bags or give goody bowls at the end of the party filled with yummies from the different bowls of food. Get creative and have chocolate covered strawberries or food dishes that uses the items in them.

Decorations:
Decorate the party space with red and green balloons or use primary colors. Make a diaper wreath and tie baby items and Eric Carle books to it. Make a diaper cake with a caterpillar theme makes a great decoration for the gift table. There are so many things you can do for centerpieces. Paint Styrofoam balls red and green and assemble as caterpillars or make small diaper cakes or cupcakes. Bowls of fruit from the book make great centerpieces and party snacks!

The Cake:
All special occasions need a cake so why not make this one out of chocolate because The Very Hungry Caterpillar likes chocolate cake. Make several cupcakes and ice the green then make a cupcake or a small cake and ice it red and decorate the caterpillar face on it. Then arrange the cupcakes so that it looks like a caterpillar. Your guests will go crazy for this display and by having cupcakes it makes it a lot easier to serve your guests when it's cake time.

If your having ice cream too, consider doing ice cream cones it's another food the caterpillar eats. Having a little bar set up with goodies to sprinkle on the ice cream cones will be a huge hit for the kiddies!