Halloween Craft Spiders

Craft Project for the Young and the Young at Heart

Ideal age group: kindergarten – 5th grade

This fun project works well on an individual basis as well as in large groups. Kids really get into their creations and it is very exciting to see what kind of creepy and fun spiders they come up with.

Goals:
Ultimately to have fun. There is also an element of stretching the creative mind through this project.

Materials:

Foam clown noses
Pipe cleaners
Tacky glue
Wiggly eyes
Beads
Glitter
Any other decorative elements
Black elastic string

Step One: Assemble the legs
This is the most difficult step and may require some adult help. It’s important that the slit of the nose ends up being the backside of the spider. I’ve tried it many other ways and this is the way that holds the best. Take your pipe cleaner, center it on the reverse side of the slit, wrap both ends through the slit and back around to the other side.

Once this is complete, repeat for the other three pipe cleaners. When finished, your spider should look like “halloween craft spider step 2.jpg” Four pipe cleaners should yield you eight legs.

 

Step Two: Accessorize
I started first by adding beads to form the joints for my spider legs. This helped the spider hold its form a little better, but I found that kids will decorate the legs in all kinds of different ways and will even use the beads as pasted elements on the spider.

After adding beads, I then pasted eyes onto one side of my spider. Since spiders have eight eyes, I naturally added eight of them. I also used the tacky glue to adhere glitter patterns on my spider.

Step Three: Dry and Hang
After letting the tacky glue dry for about 15-20 minutes, take about a few feet of elastic string and tie off the spider at the end. Now you have a great Halloween spider that bounces from its thread.

This project was conducted for over 200 kids for the Glendale, CO YMCA last year with smashing success.

It was very exciting to see all of their different creations.