Your child will love playing with this game! This printable caterpillar game has a second page with all the letters for you to cut out and glue on top of bottle caps. Once your child has all 26 bottle caps, they can practice matching the letter on the bottle cap with the letter on the caterpillar.

This activity is used at our CEFA Early Learning schools for our 2 and 3 year old children (Junior Kindergarten One and Two), so they have plenty of practice with alphabet letters.

Make sure you supervise closely as the bottle caps can be a choking hazard. If you prefer, simply print the game on cardstock and use the letters without the bottle caps. I much prefer the bottle cap version (and so will your child) but you must supervise.

You can download the game here. I use water bottle caps, but you can use anything you like. If you don’t want to go through the trouble of gluing all the letters on the bottle caps, you can always use a sharpie to draw them on a clear bottle cap. Just make sure your letters look exactly like the ones on the caterpillar.

If you are playing with your child, you can sing the alphabet song as you place the letters, or you can use the phonetic sound of the letters to refer to them: ah, b, k, d) rather than their names. This will teach your child to read sooner. Once your child can read, you can use the letters’ names (ay, bee, see, dee). Have fun!

Best Ages for This Activity

Two to four

How to Make It

What You Will Need

  • Paper
  • A printer
  • 26 bottle caps (start saving them from your water bottles)

Or:

  • Cardstock if you don’t want to use bottle caps
  • A laminator to laminate the game and the letters (to make them more sturdy – you don’t have to. We do at our schools so the game can be used over and over again)

Let’s Get Started!

  • Print the worksheets
  • Put the bottle caps in a small bowl or basket, next to the worksheet
  • Invite your child to play the alphabet caterpillar game
  • Demonstrate: pick up any bottle cap and read the letter and read it – “this is mmmmm, where is mmmmm on the caterpillar? Oh! Here it is!” then place the cap on the m on the caterpillar. Pick up one more bottle cap and repeat. Invite your child to join in. Once they are engaged in the activity, leave them to work on your own but supervise to make sure they don’t put a bottle cap in their mouth. You can read a magazine in the meantime, or work alongside your child but on your own activities.

Learning Opportunities

This activity will give your child literacy skills: they will learn fine motor skills as they manipulate the bottle caps and place them carefully on top of each letter on the caterpillar. This is harder than it looks for a young child. It also teaches them reading skills as they identify the letter and/or the sound it makes and see the entire alphabet in one activity.

Extended Learning Opportunities

  • Invite the child to make a caterpillar on the floor, placing all the bottle caps in a row from the letter a to the letter z. If they don’t remember the order, they can look at the caterpillar for guidance.
  • Find out which letters are in your child’s name
  • See which letters are in your name, in their siblings’ names, etc.
  • Use the bottle caps to write your child’s name, and simple words like dad or bib (you will need to make more bottle caps, so you have more than one of each letter)