Review and Giveaway: The Very Hungry Caterpillar 3D craft kits from Rainbow Designs

Monday 19 June 2017

Everyone knows The Very Hungry Caterpillar and instantly recognises the style of the World of Eric Carle. The bright art work is a great inspiration to get crafty and Rainbow Designs have a fab collection of kits to make it easy. We were sent a Colour and Construct 3D character cardboard set and a Super Dough Model Kit to review. Rainbow Designs have also kindly provided one of each to give away and you can enter at the bottom of the post. M loved making the Very Hungry Caterpillar and friends come to life in 3D.

A young girl colouring in a cardboard ladybird

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Colour and Construct 3D Characters

This set of 4 mini craft projects has the Very Hungry Caterpillar, a happy looking ladybird, brown bear and an elephant. Inside the box are 8 felt tip pens and 4 individually packaged character sets. Inside the clear plastic bags are the cardboard pieces (foot pieces slide on to make the character stand up) and decorations to make the animals more fun e.g. the ladybird has pipe cleaners, pom-poms and gems.

It was great to see just how much M’s concentration has improved in her first year of school as she happily focused long enough to properly colour in both sides of all the shapes on a character and then decorated them using the pictures on the box as a guide.

The age recommendation for the 3D characters is aged 4 plus. Based on M she wouldn’t have coloured the characters in very well before aged 5, but she would have enjoyed decorating the sets with supervision (warning they contain small parts).

A cardboard ladybird being coloured in red and purple

The completed cardboard 3D ladybird from Rainbow Designs on the grass

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Super Dough Model Kit

This kit comes with all the dough you need to make your own Very Hungry Caterpillar and a dough apple. The packet also contains a plastic modelling knife and step by step pictorial instructions to help you make and assemble the pieces. When the caterpillar is made you can leave it to air dry so you have a fun character to keep without worrying about it being accidentally squished. It only takes a couple of hours for the outside to dry and ours was all dry when left over night. If the dough accidentally dries out before you are done they can be rehydrated by leaving them in water.

The kit is suitable for age 3 years upwards, but it will depend on your child’s modelling skills on how much it looks like a caterpillar. M is aged 5 and really enjoyed making the caterpillar. I managed to avoid helping her and the end product does resemble the Hungry Caterpillar, kind of. I doubt it would have done if she had made it a few years ago. The non-toxic dough is soft and foamy (even when dry). It is quite easy to shape and it sticks together on touch, but it doesn’t stick to your fingers. M found it a little challenging to divide the dough into equal size pieces and to shape some of the smaller pieces (hence the BIG eyes).

A young girls arms putting together a dough model caterpillar head

The completed caterpillar dough model as created by my 5 year old

Both sets would make great presents and will definitely be on my list of gifts to buy for the next 4 or 5 year olds birthday party we go to. You can buy them from Amazon via these affiliate links: Colour and Construct 3D Characters and Super Dough Model Kit.

If you would like to win The Very Hungry Caterpillar sets from Rainbow Designs enter via the Rafflecopter widget below. One lucky winner (selected at random) will win both the Colour and Construct 3D Character set and the Super Dough Model Kit. Giveaway closes midnight Sunday 2nd July 2017.

Thank you to Rainbow Designs for providing the products to review and for the giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***Disclosure: We were provided with the sets stated above to provide an honest review. All thoughts and words are my own ***