Dear Reader,
After a week focusing on harvest, my preschooler was really excited to do another craft. We all love tomatoes (except the teen. She’s broken) but after so many days spent toiling in the kitchen, I think we are all wanting to work on some other thing. So, with paint, a paintbrush, a plate, some string, and a holepunch, we made a spider in it’s web.
To make your own, start by poking holes around a plate. I totally lucked out on my first guess, and every 4 grooves worked out perfectly to go evenly around.
then, we painted her hand. Don’t do the thumb, but do all the fingers and the palm. put her hand down on the plate, then paint again and put her hand down again the other way, so that your spider has 8 legs. Some spiders, ours included, are wiggly and you somehow randomly end up with a 9-legged spider. Roll with it. Love your spiders no matter the deformities, haha. My daughter was determined to stick the paper punches on as eyeballs, but one got lost pretty quickly, so we also have a 1-eyed spider.
Then, take a long piece of string, find the middle, and tie it around one of the punched holes in the plate, so you have two shorter strings (less knots) let your kid weave through any holes on the plate, crossing the front of the plate as much as possible. We do a lot of “sewing” so it was kinda hard for my preschooler to cross the plate when she knows sewing is supposed to go through consecutive holes. Isn’t that the way it goes; you try so hard to get her to learn a skill one way, just to need to do it another way later.
I actually really enjoyed making this with my kiddo. I think she enjoyed it, too. and, even if we do one every year, they’ll be different because her handprint will change as she grows. It was really just fun to slow down for a second and work on something together.
