Feed the Spider Color Catapulting ~ Preschool Spider Activity
I will never forget the biggest spider I ever saw, even though I only saw it for a few seconds. I love spiders, but this guy (or girl?!) made even me nervous! Luckily, this preschool spider activity is completely harmless!
We're starting our spider week, and I am super excited to bring you some spider learning activities during the next few days! This one was a lot of fun because we were able to easily adapt it for our preschoolers, toddlers, and "older" elementary kiddos.
As we fed the "spider," we practiced matching colored "flies" into the corresponding part of the "web."
This gave our youngest preschoolers and toddlers a chance to talk about and match colors, exercise coordination, and talk about spiders, diet, predation, and the purpose of webs! Our older kids talked about the parts of a web, how spiders manage to not get stuck, and how spiders eat and digest bugs and insects! I might have told them about the biggest spider I ever saw: it was on a trip when I was in college. We were visiting Thailand as part of a study abroad program. Our small group had trekked up a mountain, ridden on elephants, and was preparing to head back down into town when we spotted it: a spider so big it could take up an entire dinner plate!
I told our preschoolers that some spiders build webs to catch flies and other bugs while some (like the giant spider I saw in Thailand) jump out and grab their prey! For our activity, we were going to focus on the web-building spiders like the spider in The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. I made a "color web" and we were going to try to get the colored flies into the right spot on the web. Where do you think a blue "fly" should go? It was pretty obvious...in the blue part of the web. :)
We placed the web on the floor and drew a line about one foot away from it. Everyone had to stand behind the line. The youngest kids tried tossing the flies onto the web, and the older ones used spoons to "catapult" the flies onto the web. (Just place the fly on a plastic spoon and bend the spoon backward a teeny tiny bit to fling the fly away!) Everyone celebrated each time the flies landed in the right spot! When the flies were all used up, we gathered all the pompoms that weren't in the right spot and tried again! All the kiddos here (from 1-9 years old!) had a blast playing with the colorful flying "flies!"
To make your own Feed the Spider Color Catapulting preschool game, just tape 4 different colored pieces of paper together. You can always use more colors and build a bigger board, but four worked great for us! Flip the "board" over and draw a web on it with a permanent marker. Then pull out a pile of pompoms to use as colorful flies!
To make your own Feed the Spider Color Catapulting preschool game, just tape 4 different colored pieces of paper together. You can always use more colors and build a bigger board, but four worked great for us! Flip the "board" over and draw a web on it with a permanent marker. Then pull out a pile of pompoms to use as colorful flies!
We did this spider activity to go along with the Virtual Book Club's book this week: The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. (Amazon Affiliate Link below:)
We also talked about spider behaviors, and how most spiders will run away from you...including the giant spider I saw in Thailand! That spider was so big that I would have run away from it in an instant, but I never had the chance--as soon as it saw us, it ran and hid inside a hollow piece of bamboo!
To finish up the game, my kids took our big play spider, and had it "eat" up all the flies!
To finish up the game, my kids took our big play spider, and had it "eat" up all the flies!
Do you love spider activities? We like to do a Spider Theme or unit every October...you might enjoy our pipecleaner spiders, {FREE} spider counting playdough mats, {FREE} Spider Lapbook, our taste-safe Spider Slime, glow-in-the dark spider web art, Bubble Spider Web art, making a spider pinata, or instructions on how to "catch" a real spider web!
This week the Virtual Book Club for Kids is reading The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle and doing all kinds of preschool spider activities too! Be sure to visit these other hosts and let us know what spider-y fun you get up to:
Alphabet activities
Name activities
Numbers activities
Sensory activities
Science activities
Colors activities
Pre-writing activities
Movement activities
Shape activities
Amazon Affiliate links:
Happy Educating,
Carla
I may share at any of these parties!
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