Making our own very busy spiders and spider webs

How you can use children’s books as inspiration for activities in your classroom

All throughout the fall, we have so many different kinds of interesting creatures come and visit us at preschool. Spiders, stick bugs, praying mantis, grass hoppers, and more. We seem to find them everywhere and each new creature inspires a whole day or more of fun in our classroom…

Identify your Book of Inspiration

Spiders are quite common around our preschool and so we spent a little time reading about and making our own very busy spiders.  The book, “The Very Busy Spider” by Eric Carle, is like an old friend to me.  My copy was signed by Eric Carle a very, very long time ago and this book never gets old.  What I particularly enjoy is how the children can feel the spider web as the very busy spider makes her web throughout the book…

Use Interactive Activities to Build on the Book

Of course, reading this book naturally inspires us to make and take a walk through our own circletime spider web…

Extend Learning Outdoors

And we also went outdoors to make a very large spider web so we could use our whole bodies to climb under, over, in, and out of the web…

Use Art to Expand on the Book

Along with all the spider web action, the children were invited to make their very own spiders using a piece of scrap Styrofoam board for their canvas, some Twistable Slick Stix Crayola crayons, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners for spider legs…

The children began by drawing a spider on their piece of Styrofoam and adding googly eyes. Some of the children decided that their spiders should have 8 legs and 8 eyes so they added lots of googly eyes and legs (not always remembering to actually make sure they counted up to the magic number 8 but the idea was certainly there in conversation)…

Some of the children were happy with their spiders at this point and put them in their cubbies while others took the next step to add pipecleaners for the legs of the spiders to give a little bit of dimension to their spiders…

To add the spider legs, the children poked both ends of their spider legs into the foam board…

Lots of spider fun today plus some of the children decided they wanted to design their very own paper spiders too…

 

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Deborah J Stewart

Deborah J Stewart

Every time I think I know everything I need to know about teaching young children, God says, "Hold on a minute!" and gives me a new challenge.

Let me tell ya...

With each new challenge that you overcome, you will find yourself better equipped and more passionate about teaching young children.

God didn't call wimps to lead, teach, or care for His children. Nope, he has high expectations, so get ready. You will have to give your very best but after teaching for over 30 years, I can tell you that it is a wonderful and rewarding journey.

Whenever your calling feels hard, just remember, 'He who began a good work in you (and in the children you serve) will be faithful to complete it.'

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