If you follow this blog, you know we love to explore painting with many different kinds of materials. Paintbrushes are great, but sometimes we just like to try something new. Some of our favorites have been painting with rocks, pine needles, pom poms, tea bags, vegetables, and corn kernels, to name a few.
While watching the girls play with the spiders in our collection of Halloween materials, I thought why not see what kind of painting we could create with spiders. So one morning I set up this invitation to create…
And create they did…
FIND EVEN MORE SPIDER THEME ACTIVITIES IN OUR PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS
FOR HOME PRESCHOOL AND PRESCHOOL CLASSROOMS.
The full invitation included:
- Large piece of paper (Ours was taped to the top of our craft table outside.)
- Assorted colors of paint
- Small plastic ring spiders (Ours are from Walmart and they are more sturdy than traditional spider rings. You will want rings that basically lay flat when you press them down in order to get the full spider print.)
- Larger spiders (I tied a rubber band to a couple of them to see how the girls might use them to paint.)
Tinker was the first to try the spider with the rubber band. She had him jump, jump, jumping all over the paper.
Lovey was more focused on stamping so that she could see the full spider imprint.
Soon she realized the rubber band could come off and be used as another painting tool itself.
She started making spider webs using the rubber band.
At one point you could see a lot of different spiders. It looked really neat.
But soon the girls decided they might add their own personal touch and decided to explore painting with their fingers (to create bigger spiderwebs, mom!)
From there the activity got a bit messy, but you can tell by the joy in this little face that it was well worth it. And it led to a very fun soapy bubble soup clean up party after we were finished.
The Amazon affiliate widget below includes some of our favorite books about spiders if you’d like to read any to go along with your spider activities.
More Spider Fun on Fantastic Fun and Learning
And Don’t Forget to Read Some Great Books About Spiders, Too!
GET A FULL WEEK OF SPIDER THEME ACTIVITIES
Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.
Learn some facts about real spiders and use toy spiders to learn math, literacy and science concepts in this full lesson plan pack for preschool. Watch this short video to see just a few examples of the types of activities and printables included in this set:
The full 31-page Spider Theme Lesson Plan Pack also includes:
- My Spider Emergent Reader
- Spider Babies Fine Motor Activity Mat
- Spider Patterning Task Cards
- Spider Roll and Add Counting Game
- Spider Letter Building Mat
- Itsy Bitsy Spider Story Sequencing Pieces
- Spider Calendar (or general number) Cards
GET YOUR LESSON PLANS
Home Preschool Spider Theme Lesson Plans (in our shop or on TpT)
Preschool Classroom Spider Theme Lesson Plans (in our shop or on TpT)
Hands-On Holidays eBook
Less stress, more connecting this holiday season? Yes, PLEASE!
From the arrival of fall to Halloween to Thanksgiving and Christmas, the last four months of the year can be a wonderful opportunity for making family memories and spending time together, but they can also be stressful as we try to collect ideas, recipes, and activities to try together.
Stephanie Morgan, founder of Modern Parents Messy Kids, a site that’s been voted Best Craft Blog in Parents Magazine and one of babble.com’s Top 50 Craft Mom Blogs, recently released a new eBook to help us have a little less stress and more time to connect with family this year.
Stephanie’s goal is to make it easier on all of us to enjoy the holidays with our kids. Hands-On Holidays is 100 pages full of her family’s very favorite ways to connect as a family over the holiday season. I love the convenience of having so many ideas in one place, and most of them are simple enough for even my toddler to participate in.
The book includes picture book suggestions, DIY decor, activities, and treats. Bonus sections also offer even more ideas to enjoy. Click here to view more details.
This post has been shared at some of these fantastic link parties.
Ashley
What cool spider prints! Featured you this week on Mom’s Library!
Cerys @ Rainy Day Mum
I love this activity – as we’re fascinated by spiders at the moment this would be perfect to try with my kids. Thank you so much for linking up to Tuesday Tots and just popping by to let you know that I will be featuring this over on Rainy Day Mum this week.
Shaunna Evans
I hope your little spider lovers have fun if you decide to try this out. Thank you for featuring the post!
OneMommy
Fun! I keep seeing all these great ideas of things to paint with besides paint brushes…. We may need to try this one since we have so many little plastic rings right now!
Shaunna Evans
Staring at those plastic rings is what inspired me to give this a try! I hope have fun.
Anna@The Measured Mom
Looks like a lot of fun – love your invitations to play. Thanks for linking up at After School!
Asia Citro
This is seriously one of the coolest things ever.
Shaunna Evans
Thank you, Asia!
Sarah @ How Wee Learn
What a creative idea! My boys would love this. I would like to get a bit more creative in the painting realm – we are pretty much fingers or brush painters so far! Thanks for the inspiration
Shaunna Evans
There’s nothing wrong with traditional painting methods! But it can be a lot of fun to test out new materials, I hope you find some new inspiration soon. 🙂
Laruen
Oh, I love this! It came out awesome. I think we will do it this week.