Caterpillar Silhouettes: 20 Cartoon Crawlers with a Life Cycle and Counting Templates

One friendly cartoon character runs through all 20 caterpillars in this silhouette set: a chain of round bumps, two curled antennae, a dot eye and a little smile. The solid files keep that face by leaving the eye and mouth open in the black, so even the filled shape still has an expression. The outline files draw the same contour as a closed band.

Eight ways to wiggle

The first eight designs are the character on its own. It crawls along flat (01), humps its middle up into an arch (02), rears up in a J to look around (03), and curls into a sleepy C with its eyes shut (04). It also nibbles a leaf (05), turns its head back over its body (06), climbs a twig toward a leaf (07), and lifts one front leg as if waving (08).

Small scenes from the same poses

Designs 09 to 14 put those poses into a setting. A caterpillar stands beside a flower on a stem (09), curls up under a large leaf (10), crawls across the top of an apple drawn as two round lobes (11), and arches along above a second, smaller caterpillar (12). In 13 it crawls beneath three small flowers. Design 14 is a border piece, two caterpillars above a long ground line with two leaves on it. Design 15 is the plain crawler with the face left off, a quiet version of design 01.

Chrysalis, life cycle and learning pieces

Design 16 is a chrysalis hanging from a twig with one leaf. Design 17 lays out four stages with arrows between them: eggs on a leaf, a caterpillar, a hanging pupa and a butterfly, labeled EGG, LARVA, PUPA and ADULT. The guide adds that the adult lays eggs to start the cycle again, and it is clear the set is a stylized craft collection rather than an anatomy guide. Design 18 frames the letters ABC between two caterpillars. Designs 19 and 20 are bead-like caterpillars whose body circles are left blank in the outline version, five on one and ten on the other.

The guide suggests full-page or enlarged prints for anything you plan to read or write on, meaning the life-cycle labels and the counting circles. The four-up and six-up pages are better for repeated cutouts.

Twelve PDFs, one for each choice

Instead of one long document, the print files are split by paper, version and layout: US Letter or A4, solid or outline, and one, four or six per page, 20 pages each. The guide’s starting point is the US Letter outline file with one design per page. On those full pages a long crawler prints about 6.8 inches wide. The four-up and six-up files repeat a single design on each page, with the crawler about 3.3 inches long.

The SVG and PNG files share an 8 by 6.4 inch canvas, and the guide says all formats use matching shapes. Several scenes, the life cycle and the outline faces are made of separate pieces. Small faces and antennae need enough size, and the guide asks you to test your material, scale and settings, since no cutting result is promised.

Questions

Do the counting caterpillars have numbers on them?

No. Designs 19 and 20 have five and ten empty circles along the body for you to write in, and the head isn't one of them. Only the outline files have the empty circles. In the solid files the body is filled black.

Is the ABC design a full alphabet?

No. Design 18 is a single frame with the letters ABC between two caterpillars, not a complete alphabet. In the current files each letter A shows a thin see-through gap where its crossbar meets the legs, in design 18 and in the LARVA label of design 17, so check those letters before cutting or printing them large.