My 3 year old daughter loves to read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. Since we were studying the letter S, I thought it would be fun to do activities around this book.
The Very Busy Spider: Book Summary
This colorful picture book describes a spider’s day. Blown onto a farmyard fence, she starts to spin a web. The other animals ask if she wants to play, but in every case “the spider didn’t answer. She was very busy spinning her web.
The first thing we did was re-enact the story by using a big fake spider web and a plastic spider. (Right now is the perfect time to pick these up at stores). We placed our web out on our playset and went over the animals in the story that asked the spider to play. Then at the end we used black hole punch circles to be the “flies” that the spider catches in the web.
The Very Busy Spider: Craft Activity For Kids
Supplies:
6 wooden craft sticks
white yarn
white glue
red fun foam
green fun foam
2 google eyes
1 black pipe cleaner
glue dots
tape
1 piece of heavy construction paper or tag board
First we used Glue Dots to glue the craft sticks down on the background paper. Then we cut yarn into smaller pieces to create the web.
We dipped the yarn into glue and then placed it on the paper. You could just smear glue all on the inside of the frame and place pieces of string.
We created our own Busy Spider out of craft foam. I did have to use a strip of tape on the back of the spider to hold down the pipe cleaner legs. Then we used Glue Dots to place it on the web.
Next we did a spider sort activity from our sister site, Homeschool Nature Study.
First I had her sort between objects that were easy to distinguish what were spiders and not: plastic dog, cow, tooth, flag, spiders etc. Then we moved on to the concept that spiders have 8 legs. We counted the legs on all our plastic spiders.
Then I mixed the spiders with some plastic bugs I got at the Target Dollar Spot. We then sorted the spiders from the bugs. This was a little harder for her to do because she had to count instead of just look at the item and see if it was a spider or not.
Then of course we had to do a Do-a-Dot page! We found lots of The Very Busy Spider printables at
Making Learning Fun.
More Spider and ABC Activities for Homeschool
ABC Art Activities for Kids – Have fun learning the alphabet with these hands on ABC art activities! It’s ABC learning for your preschoolers and youngest learners with video art lesson ideas with Nana! You ARE an ARTiST Clubhouse members enjoy Nana’s guide to ABC Learning with Art Lessons.
How to Make a Playdough Spider – Celebrate the beauty of fall with a fun spider craft and online art lessons. We find the changing season to be an invitation to slower paced learning and more time spent in nature. Then, we come inside and follow up with even more learning!
Folk Tales, Art and History – Learn about Anansi the Spider with Jim Weiss, Nana and Amy Sloan in a special event!
Charlotte’s Web Homeschool Art Lessons and Tea Time Activities – The Spider art lesson is suitable for all ages and looks like Charlotte. Even your littlest of learners can join in on this one. Nana also has a colorful spider web art lesson. You can enjoy this one and even ‘weave’ in ‘SOME PIG’ and more of Charlotte’s words.
Famous Artist Eric Carle Homeschool Study – “Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and designed picture books children. His best known book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten it’s way into the hearts of millions of children all over the world and has been translated into 66 languages and sold over 50 million copies. Since The Very Hungry Caterpillar was was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than 70 books. This includes many best sellers which he wrote. More than 152 million copies of his books have sold around the world!” – Nana
Join Nana for ALL the very best art and crafts activities and access to all the fun!
Maureen helps Christian mompreneurs operate their business from a place of joy, purpose, and excellence because they are clear on how their business is serving their family and others. As a homeschool mom, she believes success at home AND business without the mom-guilt, stress and burn-out is possible! Outside of work, she loves having good conversations over a hot chai or GT Gingerberry kombucha and spending time with her husband and seven children. Visit her at MaureenSpell.com