It’s always fun to make stuff you can play with, like this easy Moving Pipe Cleaner Caterpillar Craft! A fun project for kids of all ages!

Do you sometimes wish you had more hands and legs to keep up with life’s many responsibilities? Extra hands to hold and do stuff, and extra legs to take us to places faster!

However, more legs may not necessarily mean more speed; take the caterpillar, for instance. It has 16 legs, but it only moves a centimeter a second!

Maybe this has something to do with how the caterpillar moves, which is not walking – it’s more of a wave-like motion. If you want to see this in motion, we have something that may help – a moving pipe cleaner caterpillar!

Contents show

Easy Moving Pipe Cleaner Caterpillar Craft

Supplies required:

Colored cardstock paper
Pipe-cleaners
Hot glue
Googly eyes
Thin sticks or skewers
Markers

How to make the Moving Pipe Cleaner Caterpillar:

1. Download the Moving Pipe Cleaner Caterpillar template. The template includes the parts of the leaf, over which the caterpillar is going to move. There’s a leaf shape and a square shape – you’ll see why you need both!

2. Trace the leaf and square patterns on craft paper and cut them out. Make sure they’re both cut from the same paper, in any shade of green that you like. Cut a 2″ piece of pipe cleaner and keep it aside.

3. Get a marker in the same shade as the craft paper and use it to draw veins and an outline on the leaf.

4. Roll the small square paper into a cylinder. Secure the shape with glue.

5. Take your stick or skewer – it’s time to make the caterpillar! Place one end of the pipe cleaner on the stick and start rolling the pipe cleaner around the stick, coiling as tightly as you can.

6. Continue rolling till the entire pipe cleaner is neatly coiled around the stick, with no empty spaces in between.

7. Hold the coiled pipe cleaner caterpillar with one hand and pull out the stick. Voila! You now have the first part of our moving pipe cleaner caterpillar!

8. Remember the 2″ piece of pipe cleaner you cut in the beginning? Twist that piece into a tight little coil – this is going to be the caterpillar’s head.

9. Attach the pipe cleaner head to one end of the caterpillar’s body.

10. Stick two googly eyes to the caterpillar’s head – it’s okay if it seems disproportionately big!

11. Okay, it’s time to put everything together for our moving pipe cleaner caterpillar! Attach the rolled paper cylinder to the center of the paper leaf with glue.

12. Insert the stick through the paper cylinder.

13. Attach the bottom of the pipe cleaner caterpillar’s head to the end of the stick that’s on the other end of the paper cylinder.

14. Attach the end of the caterpillar’s body to the paper cylinder’s bottom end of the paper cylinder, as shown below.

15. Now comes the fun part – when you pull the stick, the caterpillar will bend, and when you push the stick, the caterpillar straightens!

Now that you’ve figured out how to move the caterpillar, it’s time to play and have some fun with it!

When you watch your child playing with this moving pipe cleaner caterpillar, you’ll be reminded of how simple life was when we were kids. Childhood is like that basically; kids don’t need expensive or complicated things to give them joy, or to entertain that sense of wonder. Maybe we adults can also benefit a little by making fun crafts like these!

If you’re looking for more caterpillar crafts, you may like these: