The Very Busy Spider – Letter S

My 3 year old daughter loves to read The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. Since this week we were studying the letter S, I thought it would be fun to do activities around this book.

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. (from Amazon)

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.

Next we made a Busy Spider craft.

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. Click here if you would like to download the spider sorting mat.

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.

What a fun Letter S week!

For More Book/Craft ideas see:
stART : A Mommy’s Adventures
Read. Learn. Explore.
Preschool Corner

Comments

An Almost Unschooling Mom says:

September 30, 2010 at 11:09 am

Great spider activities – and I love the craft!

Erin_hsm says:

September 30, 2010 at 11:54 am

Passing along the Versatile Blogger Award to you! Please stop by an accept at http://baldwinhomeschool.blogspot.com =)

Debbie says:

September 30, 2010 at 1:22 pm

I love the spider craft, that is so cute!

Brimful Curiosities says:

September 30, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Where did you find your do-a-dot printable? We have a set of those paints and I'd love to start using printable templates with my son.

Karen says:

September 30, 2010 at 1:59 pm

The spider craft is super cute and will definitely be bookmarking that for later this month.

Ticia says:

September 30, 2010 at 2:37 pm

What a super cute craft, I bet she had a blast.

RedTedArt says:

September 30, 2010 at 2:44 pm

What a great spiders web! And I love the spider!!

Maggy
Kids Get Crafty
Red Ted Art

Mozer says:

September 30, 2010 at 10:26 pm

Do-a-dot printable links:
http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/SpiderTheVeryBusyPrintables.htm – check the magnet pages –they work well for Do-a-Dot

http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/alphadoadot.pdf ABC Do-A-DOt

And I'm pretty sure Confessions of a HOmeschooler has some too. I usually Google for what I need.

kewkew says:

October 1, 2010 at 9:52 pm

What a cute craft. I also liked the spider sort activity.

LitLass says:

October 4, 2010 at 12:39 am

Love the spider activities. My son has just gotten interested in spiders and their webs.

Maya says:

October 4, 2010 at 2:54 am

Lovely craft. And I like the concentration in the little one's eyes