Thursday 2nd March sees the annual World Book Day celebrations, and parents all over the country will be letting out a collective groan when they realise they need to send their kids to school dressed up as a character from a book.

A few years ago, when it was Harrison’s first World Book Day at nursery, I knew I wasn’t going to buy one and would make one instead.

I am RUBBISH at sewing. I’m not even sure we own a needle and thread (that’s what my mum is for!), so I needed something that didn’t involve sewing.

One of Harrison’s favourite books at the time was ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. A few years ago, we did a series of activities based on the book, and one of these was making hats.

The hat is simple. All you need is green, red, yellow and black paper, glue, pencil and scissors.

Cut the red paper in half, width ways (I call this the ‘hot dog’). Glue two ends together to make a long strip of paper. Check the fit of the hat and then secure the two ends to make a circle.

On the yellow paper, draw two wonky circles for eyes, and then repeat on the green paper, making them smaller. Stick the green circles onto the yellow ones, and then stick them onto the hat.

On the black paper, draw two antennae shapes. Because of Eric Carle’s quirky illustrations, these can also be a bit wonky. Attach these to the inside of the hat, and ta-da, you have a Very Hungry Caterpillar hat.

The t-shirt is simple. I printed some Very Hungry Caterpillar images from Twinkl, and then laminated them.

I cut them out and used a hot glue gun to secure them to an old green t-shirt. He wore this with some khaki coloured trousers.