Putting The Pretty In Preschool

Finding Beauty In Everyday Early Childhood Experiences

spiders

Spooky Hands Craft

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Easy to make spooky hands craft using shiny white corn syrup paint, Q-tips, and nail art. A seasonal, all-ages activity that is sure to stun.

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This shiny spooky hands craft is effortless to do and uses easy-to-gather materials. The supplies for this project can be found at your local grocery and dollar stores.

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Supplies To Collect

  • white corn syrup
  • orange, green, and purple food coloring
  • paint containers and brushes
  • spoons
  • spider-themed fake nails
  • skull-themed fake nails
  • polka dot fake nails
  • Q-Tips
  • spider gems
  • sturdy white paper
  • black permanent felt pen
  • scissors

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Taste safe corn syrup paint ingredients.

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Traced hands and supplies needed to make spider, skull, and skeleton hand-themed crafts.

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Making The Spooky Hands Craft

Using a permanent felt pen, help your early learners trace their hands on a sturdy piece of white paper. Stitches can be drawn on one of the hands. Assist with cutting the shapes out.

Together, mix a few drops of food coloring into containers of white corn syrup with spoons. A bit of yellow food coloring added to green makes it lighter and brighter. A few drops of yellow and red can be stirred to make orange. Combining red and blue makes purple.

Set out the paper hands, corn syrup paint, and paintbrushes. Invite your little learners to decorate each hand in one shiny color.

Add fake nails, Q-tips, and spiders. Let your little learners stick the loose parts into their tacky, painted hands.

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Supplies needed to create a green skeleton-themed painted hand.

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Supplies needed to create an orange, spider-themed hand.

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Supplies needed to create a purple spooky hand with stitches.

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Allow the sticky projects generous time to dry.

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Green painted hand, decorated with Q-tip bones and orange skull-themed nails.

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Orange painted hand, decorated with spiders and spider-themed nails.

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Purple painted hand with stitches drawn on and polka dot nails.

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Other paint colors and nail art can be used to take advantage of seasonal supplies and make the craft project your own.

This spooky hands craft is easy and fun…the perfect combination! Which hand theme is your favorite? Share in the comments section below.

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Spooky hand art using shiny, taste-safe paint and spider and skeleton-themed loose parts.

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Charlotte’s Web Book Theme

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Charlotte's Web storybook activities. Sensory tubs, crafts, and games for children. Art, math, and language arts opportunities to learn.

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This Charlotte’s Web Book Theme is based on the best-selling children’s chapter book by E. B. White. The story centers around a pig named Wilbur, a spider named Charlotte, two farm families, and other colorful barnyard animals. The latter part of the story celebrates the sights, sounds, and excitement of a country fair.

For a summary of the book, click here:

E. B. White is quoted as saying that he wrote Charlotte’s Web for children, and for his own enjoyment. But I thoroughly relished rereading the tale through an adult lens.

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Charlotte’s Web Book Theme Activities

There is plenty of inspiration in the story for farm and country-themed early learning activities.

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Sensory Bin: Wilbur’s Pen

Inspiration: When Wilbur gets a little bigger, he is moved to the barn on Mr. Zuckerman’s farm.

Wilbur's pen in the barn rice sensory bin with a spider web printable.

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Offer a sensory tub for your child with the following items:

  • brown rice base
  • fence pieces
  • pig
  • large spider
  • baby spiders
  • cookie cutter spider web
  • cotton batting
  • sign over Wilbur’s pen
  • wooden alphabet letters
  • white pearl beads
  • pink gems
  • shells
  • black and pink buttons
  • pink straws

Small World: Haying Time

Inspiration: July is haying time on the farm. The barn is overstuffed with hay, and Fern and Avery Arable enjoy riding on the hay wagon.

Set up a sensory tub farmyard scene for your early learner with the following:

  • kraft colored shredded paper hay
  • barn
  • tractor and hay wagon
  • farm animals
  • farmer, boy, and girl figurines
  • fences and trees
Haying time sensory bin with shredded paper hay, tractor, wagon, barnyard animals, and farm family figurines.

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Art: Daisy Crown

Inspiration: In the farmyard, Fern makes a crown out of daisies.

Invite your child to decorate a paper headband with paper, craft, or real daisies. You can download the headband pattern below.

Daisy crown with felt flowers.
Daisy Crown With Felt Flowers

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Craft crown with paper punched daisies.
Paper Punched Daisy Crown

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Headband PatternDownload

This printable was created in PicMonkey and is for personal or one classroom use only.

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Group Game: What’s In My Pocket?

Inspiration: During his play outside, Avery puts a frog and a snake in his pocket.

Have one child in a group stand behind a divider and hide a snake or frog in a pocket. 

Pick another child in the group to guess whether a snake or frog has been slipped into the pocket.

If a child isn’t wearing clothing with a pocket, one can be made from sturdy cardstock paper. Cut out a pants pocket, and glue it onto an 8 1/2 inch x 11-inch piece of cardstock.

"Guess What's In The Pocket" game with a snake and frog. This game is inspired by the storybook "Charlotte's Web."

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Sensory Tub: Templeton’s Treasures

Inspiration: Templeton, the barn rat, is a “packrat” and finds everything interesting and useful to collect.

Templeton the rat's treasure finds sensory tub. Toys, play food, loose parts, descriptive words, and a rat figurine are added to the bin.

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Offer a sensory tub with the following items:

  • kraft colored paper shred
  • rat figurine
  • recycled items
  • toys
  • play food
  • kind words cut from newspaper advertisements

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Sensory Game: Hopping Frogs

Inspiration: One of Avery’s frogs jumps into Mrs. Zuckerman’s dishpan full of soapy water.

Have your child flip hopping frogs into a tray filled with soapy water.

Frog and dishpan game inspired by the storybook "Charlotte's Web."

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Art: Buttermilk Painting

Inspiration: Mrs. Zuckerman gives Wilbur a buttermilk bath the morning he is taken to the fair.

Using a sponge brush, invite your early learner to spread buttermilk with a little sugar in it (to add shine) over a pale pink paper pig.

Decorate Wilbur Pig with buttermilk "paint." An art activity inspired by the storybook "Charlotte's Web."

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Or have your child decorate the pig with white poster paint.

Paint the pig white. An art activity inspired by the storybook "Charlotte's Web."

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Group Game: Guess The Hand

Inspiration: Avery and Fern get quarters, dimes, and nickels to spend at the fair.

Ask one child to stand behind a divider and hide a coin in one hand. Invite another child to guess which hand the coin is in.

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Math: Count The Eggs

Inspiration: In the barn, a goose lays eggs. Each time, mention is made of how many she lays.

Set out an egg carton with plastic or real cooked unshelled eggs. Ask your early learner to add some of the eggs to a shredded paper nest and pick the corresponding wooden number.

Counting eggs math activity inspired by the storybook "Charlotte's Web."

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The book Charlotte’s Web offers a treasury of inspiration for early learning activities. And if you haven’t read the tale for a while, curl up in your favorite spot and give it a read!

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World Book Day Story Book Feature: Just Itzy

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World Book Day Just Itzy storybook theme. Spider sensory and small world activities for young children.

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World Book Day is held every year on the first Thursday in March. It is a celebration of authors, illustrators, and books.  And it is most of all a celebration of reading.

The impact of the picture book “Just Itzy” spanning my preschool storytime, a teacher aide’s home, and three children and their classrooms makes the story worthy of a shout out for World Book Day.

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The “Just Itzy” Story

“Just Itzy” is written by Lana Krumwiede and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli. This story was one of the many books about spiders I chose last Fall in gathering resources for a Spider theme. It is an entertaining read about a spider named Itzy Bitzy and his first day of school. In the story, Itzy wants to catch his lunch instead of taking a lunch box that had been packed for him. In learning to make a spider web to trap food he becomes part of the nursery rhymes “Little Miss Muffet”, “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly”, and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” By the end of the tale, Itzy builds a successful spider web AND rescues his big brother Gutzy who had been teasing him about his “smallness.”

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The Story’s Reach

My class enjoyed the story. The teacher aide liked “Just Itzy” so much she borrowed the book from a library for her three children. After numerous readings at home, the story was further enjoyed at her children’s school:

  • Both grade school children took the book to school to show it to their teachers and classmates.
  • One teacher had the teacher aide’s child read the book to the class.
  • The teacher in the kindergarten class ordered the book, and it fit in perfectly with the Fantasy Theme the students were working on.

The teacher aide said that for weeks afterward, their family would add humor to their day by chanting “Keep your eye on the fly,” a saying Itzy’s “spindergarten” teacher taught the class about never giving up.

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“Just Itzy” Story Centers

Spider Small World

Spider themed small world with translucent pipe builders, spiders, a fly, flowers, and a spider web on a patch of grass.

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This small world has

  • a play grass base
  • Safari Toob flowers
  • different-sized toy spiders
  • a toy fly
  • a cupcake liner spider web
  • translucent pipe builders

It is winter in our city at the moment. This activity would be great in the summer using a patch of grass and some real flowers!

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Spider Light Table Activity

Spiders, a fly, a spider web and translucent pipe builders on the light table.

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An opportunity to reenact the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” nursery rhyme on the light table or regular table with

  • a large plastic spider web
  • small toy spiders
  • a toy fly
  • translucent pipe builders

Most spiders at this center are very tiny so they fit in the pipe builders.

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Spider Web Sensory Bin

An all-black spider web sensory bin with noodles, rice, beans, spiders, and loose parts.

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Items in the bin:

  • black rice
  • black rotini noodles
  • black beans
  • plastic spiders
  • loose parts such as buttons, beads and hair ties
  • spider web made from rope

Toy tweezers would work well with this activity.

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The storybook “Just Itzy” is an engaging read that works wonderfully for the beginning of school, anytime in Fall, and on World Book Day.

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