Easter Egg Caterpillar

HOLY CUSS WHERE DID ALL OF THESE EASTER EGGS COME FROM WHY ARE THEY HERE AND WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO DO WITH JESUS BECOMING A HOLY GHOST ZOMBIE?!

I mean, it's Easter time! And I have so many left over plastic eggs from last year's egg hunts and this year's community egg hunt and the eggs I foolishly bought thinking I may not have enough, I just may go crazy.

There are really cute and creative ways to reuse these eggs (like making popcicles in them, hiding games in them and serving surprise snacks/meals inside)  but I haven't found any that actually get rid of them, I mean...permanently re-purpose them. 

Enter Google, the Easter Caterpillar:

The idea originally came from Child Central Station but I had to make a few tweaks to make it work for the eggs we have. 

First you need:

• pipe cleaners
• plastic eggs with at least one hole on each end
• googly eyes

First you want to string the pipe cleaner through one whole egg, top and bottom shell, to create the tail. 

No, that is not Easter sperm, that is the demonstrated tail of the caterpillar. 

What worked best for me was to use an egg with two holes in the bottom shell to create the tail. I thread the pipe cleaner through the inside of the egg, through the bottom, back in through the second hole and then twisted it on the inside of the egg until it was mostly secure.
(I should have taken pictures...the website did a much better job explaining all of this. I'm just adding the adjustments I had to make.)

Then you only use one half of each egg shell to create the rest of the caterpillar. 

I found, however, that not all of the eggs had a hole in them and the ones that did were too small for the pipe cleaner. So I used a knife to round out the holes to make them large enough for the pipe cleaner to string through. The website directed you to use two pipe cleaners for the entire caterpillar but most of my eggs only had one hole and I'm too lazy to go all cavewoman and carve holes into all of these eggs. 

So, then it was Bella's turn. 

She strung on the egg shells, practicing her fine motor skills, and actually really enjoyed herself. We named the colors and discussed our favorites; hers being pink and purple but she also likes white.

When we got to the last egg shell we strung it through and because I only used one pipe cleaner I was stumped as to how to give the caterpillar 2 antennae like the website did. I tried to convince her it was a tongue but that wasn't going to work for her. 

So I found another egg shell that had two holes, cut another piece of pipe cleaner to string through and create a second antennae. 

Like that.

We glued googly eyes, hence her name, and Ta Da! Bella's new "pet" was created. (Google is friends with a snake also and likes to hang out in the bathroom).

I would recommend gluing the head onto the body to fasten it more securely in place. This morning Google had one eye and a half severed head (rough night in the bathroom). 

If you try this, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. :) It took more improvising than I anticipated but it was worth it. Like I said, she was quickly given a gender, a name, declared a new pet, resides in the bathroom (odd...) and even has a specific noise it makes. She's a great new toy and I'm down several plastic eggs - totally worth it.