Simple Spider Themed Activities for Preschoolers

Are you looking for some great spider activities for preschoolers?

I am not a friend of real-life spiders….especially those gigantic Texas-sized spiders that make me want to take the first plane back to Ohio.   I do, however, enjoy using the plastic variety of creepy-crawly spiders for crafts and activities to support preschool themes.  Today, I have lots of ideas and simple activities for your spider theme or fall Halloween theme.

The fun spider theme activities and ideas include fine motor, counting, and process art activities that are perfect for the Halloween season or any time of year. You and your kids will have so much fun!

Preschool Spider Crafts

Here are some cute spider crafts for you and your kids to try out. I love that they also double as spider fine motor activities.

Spider’s Web Paper Plate Craft

This easy spider web craft is a great fine motor activity and a great supplement to the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.  Prepare a paper plate by punching a hole on the edge.  Then, tie a fairly long length of string to it.  Any kind of yarn will work, but I really like the effect of the white, feathery yarn that I found at the craft store.

Be sure to wrap the tape around the end of the yarn so that kids can easily push it through holes in the plate.  Kids can use a hole punch to create additional holes around the edge of the paper plate.  When they lace the yarn through the holes, it will create a nice spider web.  Of course, no spider web is complete without a spider.  We added a little spider ring to our web creations. Make a cut in the ring so that kids can easily add it to the web.

Stretchy Spider Web Craft

In addition to yarn, kids will also enjoy stretching and taping spiderwebs to a paper plate with this fun spider craft.  Check out this blog post about spider web art and craft projects to get the directions.

Spider Fine Motor Craft

Looking for a paper spider craft activity for preschoolers? This printable fine motor craft was designed to give your kids fine motor practice. Your kids can get cutting practice as they cut out the pieces of this cut and paste activity. Plus, there are opportunities for line tracing and hole punching to help them build hand strength and pencil grasp.

Spider Necklaces with Pony Beads

Making a spider necklace is a great way to work on fine motor skills, pincer grasp, and eye-hand coordination plus math skills like counting and patterning.

Much like the snowflake counting necklaces that I shared in a previous article, I prepped the easy spider craft necklaces by hot gluing a plastic spider to a tagboard circle or square.  I punched a hole in the top, added some orange cord and a single bead.  Once prepared, kids can add beads to each side of the necklace.

Spider Fine Motor Activities

In addition to fine motor craft activities, there are many printable fine motor activities with a spider theme. These Halloween themed hole punch and cut activities are a motivating way to get kids to build fine motor skills.

Spider Art Activities

It’s also fun to create spidery art activities. Try these spidery creations.

Spider Name Art

Use a customized name coloring page to create beautiful spider web art creations featuring your kids’ names.

Or….you can add a seasonal word like Boo, Spooky, or Halloween to the editable page. In addition to coloring the page, kids can use watercolors, markers, spray bottle painting, blow painting with straws, or bubble painting.

Open-Ended Spider Art Activity

It’s also fun to create a spidery open-ended art activity.  Get out your glue gun and a glue stick and attach a plastic spider to a piece of paper.  Then you can let kids add their artwork to the paper.  You can provide additional materials like crayons, glue, yarn, paper, paint, glitter, colored masking tape, toothpicks, straws….anything.  It will be fun to see what kind of artwork they come up with.

Here are some process art ideas that you can use with your spider paper:

• bubble painting
• spray bottle painting
• Use black paper and a white crayon or chalk
• Make a DIY paintbrush with materials like straw, pipe cleaners, or string.

Spider Blow Painting

It’s also fun to use this spidery paper for blow painting.  In the picture above, we used an eyedropper to drop thin black paint onto the paper.  Then, we used a straw to blow the paint into beautiful random designs. 

This would also look gorgeous if you used black construction paper and white paint.

Spider Web Process Art Activities

You can also use inexpensive decorative spider webs for fun spider web process art activities. Roll a web around a pool noodle to create an interesting paint roller.

Spider Sensory Activities

Spider Playdough Tray

Make some black playdough, add lots of googly eyes, pom poms, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, and more so that your preschool children can make fun spiders with playdough. Visit my blog post about spider playdough activities to get more ideas….and learn tips and tricks for making homemade black playdough.

Spiders in the Sensory Bin

Looking for simple activities for your Halloween sensory table? Young kids love this spidery sensory play.

Add a collection of plastic spiders, black beans or pebbles, and training chopsticks to your sensory table or bin for some fall fine motor fun. Provide an empty egg carton or a divided container so that kids can pick up a spider and place it in a section of the container.

Spider Learning Activities

From name activities and alphabet activities to fun spider math games. Here are a bunch of spider learning activities for young children.

Spider Magnets

I think that my magnetic spiders were actually my first Pinterest-inspired project.  To make them, I hot glued small magnets to the back of inexpensive plastic spiders.  Over the years, we have had fun decorating our doors and refrigerator with the spiders.  My son used to spend a little time at preschool each morning before his bus picked him up.  One October, he spent that time placing these little spiders all over the preschool.  He had a blast…..but I can’t say that my co-workers shared his enthusiasm for the creepy crawlies 😊.

In addition to using the creepy spiders to decorate or to scare people, you can also use them for learning activities with your kids.  While all of these activities are perfect to use during the month of October, they would also be great additions to a study of nursery rhymes (Itsy Bitsy Spider or Little Miss Muffet) or bugs.

Spider Name Activities

Use the spiders on a magnetic board or cookie sheet, and kids can practice recognizing the letters in their name.

Spider Alphabet Activities

Draw a letter on paper or use letter collage sheets to work on individual letter recognition and phonemic awareness.  Combine literacy and math by asking kids to count the number of spiders that fit inside the letter.

Spider Math Activities

You can also use the little spiders as fun counters for ten-frame and other activities in your math center.  The spider math activity below can be found at my store, but you can also download a blank ten-frame here.

Spider Emergent Reader

While we are talking about spiders, you can also get a copy of a cute spider emergent reader that I made.  Learn more about the free printable emergent here.

Spider Color and Size Sorting Activity

Kids can work on sorting with this adorable spider color and size sorting activity.

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Additional Spider Activities In The Store

I hope that you found some spider activities for preschoolers that you want to try out with your kids. Are you ready to try out some printable spider activities?

Check out these fun spider activities available in my store.  Click out the images below to learn more.

Purchase the Spider Activities on TPT

Do you prefer to shop on Teachers Pay Teachers? You can also purchase the spider activities in my TPT store.

Additional Halloween Activities

Here are additional Halloween theme activities for Early Learning Ideas.