Make a Spider- Fine Motor Activity with Beads

Halloween is almost here, but I still have a few activities to share with you. I will lead off today’s post with the fact that all of my children (6, 4, and 2 years old) loved this activity! Read on to see how you can recreate the fun at your house.

This activity uses just a few basic supplies, so hopefully you can set it up with short notice! Also great for a group!

Here’s What You Need

• Black paper

• Pencil

• Pony beads

• Pipe cleaners

• Scissors (I linked our favorite kid scissors, but you might need a sharper pair or adult hands for one step)

• Cup or bowl to trace, or go free hand if you feel great about your circle making abilities.

• Tape (I started with a stapler, but quickly decided tape was a better way to go)

• Optional- googly eyes

Set up

2-5 minutes

1. Draw or trace circles on your black paper. This will make the body of the spider, so adjust your size accordingly.

2. Cut out your circles ahead of time or let your child have a chance to practice scissor skills.

3. Cut your pipe cleaners as desired. I cut mine into thirds to make the task more approachable, but you may wish to leave them longer for older kids.

4. Tape the pipe cleaners to the back of your spider body.

5. Add optional eyes to the front.

6. Set out the beads in a bowl and have your child color match the beads to the pipe cleaner legs.

Clean Up

1 minute

1. I save our beads because we use them for a lot of different activities, but otherwise, everything else gets tossed in the trash/recycle.

Our googly eyes are self adhesive, however the super tiny ones were too tricky for little hands to take the backing off. We pivoted to a glue stick for the tiny ones.

I was shocked that Vaila stuck with this activity for 30 minutes! She usually likes to try fine motor activities like this for shorter bouts of time over a period of a few days, but she loved completing each spider leg! She was so proud of her hard work at the end.

Brinley is 6 and also liked this activity, but it didn’t take her nearly as long to complete. She would have done great with longer pipe cleaner legs.

For Ellette, I didn’t even attach her legs to the spider body. Instead, I held the pipe cleaner for her and she loved stacking on the beads. I wasn’t sure if she would be able to do this successfully, but she once again surprised me. That’s just her M.O. since birth!

This activity offers scissor skills, fine motor skills, color discrimination, color matching, and a whole lot of fun! I hope your kids get a kick out of it as much as mine did!

Looking for other activities? Check these out:

Other Recent Posts…