So - More Spiders...& more, & more & more...

So we can't seem to get enough of the spiders at the moment. - and I am not going into the dead baboon spider who was much loved by one little boy before being accidentally trodden on and disposed of shortly thereafter...there were many tears (and one grateful Mom) - RIP baboon spider!!!

Before I forget, I came across a lovely book by the author of The Very Hungry Catepillar (which is a huge hit in our house), apparently he has written another book about...yip, you guessed it...spiders! It's called The Very Busy Spider and you can have a peek at it here, I've already added it to our wish list but am secretly hoping to come across it in our library as our wish list is already far too long!!!

Luckily our weekly activity class has fallen straight into the theme the last little while, learning all about different bugs & animals etc, and learning new songs about them!

They even did a little pit of painting the one day - you know, that stuff I dread so much that I posted about it here!!!

Bear was amazing though, I helped him a bit with the first (the one on the table in front of him) and then when I wasn't looking he went and made one all by himself, even gluing on feelers and adding glitter while remaining surprising paint/glue/glitter free himself!
He then just asked me to cut it out so he could stick it onto a lollipop stick, so I obliged and he finished gluing it on by himself. So clearly he didn't really need my help much at all...lol.

When they were talking about spiders in the group, Bear jumped right in and told them all the facts he learnt about spiders over the last few weeks. I love how he isn't nervous sharing at all, in fact I had to stop him from taking over the whole class himself!

Back at home we've been enjoying singing incey wincey little spider (BTW - the actions are great for learning coordination and fine & gross motor skills), so when I came across this and remembered I had a few sheets of magnetic paper lying around I decided to make some for our fridge.

So lately when I'm busy in the kitchen the kids play with them, and sometimes I'll sing while they stick on/point to the right picture at the appropriate time in the song.














Even Evie is getting the hang of it!











And then we wrote the words under each picture - because I'm still trying to do a bit of groundwork on the ABC's where ever I can!
And I'm sure everyone in the world knows these but just in case - here's the actions we use:

The eensey weensey spider went up the water spout. (Walk your fingers up, using thumb & forefinger - fine motor skills)
Down came the rain (flutter your fingers down, simulating rain - fine motor skills)
And washed the spider out (bend down and bang the floor - gross motor skills )
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. (Make a circle over your head with your arm, simulating the sun - gross motor skills)
Then the eensey weensey spider went up the spout again. (Walk your fingers up - fine motor skills)

Then after the great painting success earlier in the week I decided to get brave and do a little project I though Bear would enjoy and fitted into our spidery & buggy interests.



So basically the plan was something like this >







So - what do we need?

• Newspaper - to protect your home
• Paper
• Paint
• Paintbrush & water
• Straw

So - how did we use them?

First I covered the surfaces with paper (trust me, do not be shy, I definitely didn't use enough newspaper!).
Then I put nice dollops of paint on the paper for Bear.









Then I handed him a straw and off we went blowing as hard as could be!

I just have to add here I thought I was being very clever doing a painting activity where Bear didn't actually have to touch any paint...oh how wrong I was, lol.

We encountered our first problem almost immediately - the paint was quite thick, and rather than making spidery & buggy legs, our huffing and puffing was only producing slightly bigger blobs.

So I added a bit of water to each blob (I think next time I may just try this with water colours rather than acrylics) which worked a little better.


Then we encountered problem number 2...
Which was that while I had a desired end result in mind, Bear had no such preconceived notions.
I was hoping to let our paintings dry and then draw on eyes, legs, wings etc to complete our piece of art...but Bear was having none of it, he wanted to PAINT!
So much for not touching the paint, he grabbed a brush and got to it.











And despite me trying to show him that you could do various different things, like dots and strips and swirls etc, he was intent on covering as much of the paper as possible!


So we mixed up all our paints into different colours and painted, and painted and...

...painted!

And subsequently the table, Bear & I ended up with paint everywhere!!!

Oh well, you win some and you lose some!!!