Saturday, October 29, 2011

Spider Cups

So I thought it would be easy to find black paper cups this time of year, but no. Every store just sold the big plastic ones with ridges. Then I looked for any solid-color paper cups. Still nothing. So I ended up buying some monster cups from the birthday party section at Target and painted them black. It took two coats of paint, but went fairly quickly.
Then I poked eight holes near the top of the cup (which would actually be the bottom since they will be used upside down), four on each side. I also poked two holes a little further up near the front of the cup. You'll be able to see that in a bit. I set out some black pipe cleaners (cut into smaller pieces) and wiggle eyes that were stuck on glue dots. I also cut some triangles out of red and white paper and put those on glue dots as well.
First you take the black pipe cleaner and string it through the two holes near the front of the cup.

Those are the spider's pedipalps. Then we used silver pipe cleaners for the legs by stringing them through the remaining eight holes, using 4 whole pipe cleaners.
You just go in one side and out the other. Then the kids used a metallic Sharpie to draw a mouth and then stuck on the eyes and fangs. The glue dots worked great! Then they bent the pipe cleaners into legs.
If you bend them just right, you can actually get the cup to be up off the table. We sure did have some creepy crawlies!
In the past, I've spent an entire week teaching about spiders. I love my spider theme. But at my new center, I don't get to choose my themes. (Boo.) So I just taught some basic spider facts during one day of my Halloween theme. I used this amazing book:
It's by Nic Bishop. It has the coolest close-up pictures of spiders I've ever seen! Look at those fangs! And it's filled with great information. I also read this book:
"'Will you walk into my parlor?' said the spider to the fly." Ooh, I love it! It's by Tony DiTerlizzi, but it's based on the famous cautionary tale by Mary Howitt. If you haven't read it, go get it!

Fun Fact: Spiders have pale blue blood!

10-18-12 UPDATE: We made these again this year (although I found and bought black paper cups!) but used colored glitter pipe cleaners. I love the added color!


5 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh my goodness, this craft is AWESOME!! Thanks for sharing the book ideas too!

Betsy said...

Thanks, Rachel! I thought the kids might have trouble putting the pipe cleaners through the holes, but they all did a great job!

BeanBugCrafts said...

This is such a cute idea to do with the little ones! I've featured it in my 15 Halloween Kids Crafts Round-Up. You can find the post here: http://beanbugcrafts.blogspot.com/2012/10/15-halloween-kid-crafts.html

Thanks,
Anna

Unknown said...

Great idea! What did you use to poke the holes? :)

Betsy said...

I poked the holes with one point of a scissors using a twisting motion as I pushed. Because it was a paper cup, it was pretty easy. Just don't poke the scissors through too far or the hole will be too big for the pipe cleaners. I believe I kept one hand on the inside of the cup to stop the scissors as soon as it poked through. But you have to be careful not to hurt yourself doing it that way!