Spiderweb Balance- Halloween Fine Motor Activity for Kids

Today’s post is short and sweet. This is an activity that you can probably set up at your house this weekend without much prep time.

This is a great fine motor and concentration activity for kids of all ages, but I love that you can keep it super simple for the little ones or bring it up a notch in difficulty for older kids.

Here’s What You Need

• Bowl, storage bin, pot, or something similar. We used a mixing bowl.

• Tape. We used this colored masking tape to keep it on theme for Halloween, but any masking or painter’s tape will work.

• Spiders or use pom poms as a substitute if you have those on hand.

• Optional- die or dice for older kids. See below for ways to add extra challenge into this activity. We snagged ours from a game.

• Optional- tweezers. We did not use these, but they would be a great way to keep older kids interested in this activity.

Set up

1-3 minutes

1. Make a spiderweb across the top of your bowl. Start by making an “X” then adding more tape across to make a star (or snowflake as the kids called it).

2. Add short tape pieces between each spoke to create a spider web. Our bowl was only big enough for one layer, but a larger container might have room for more. Larger containers offer more of a challenge.

3. Balance the spiders on the web- see how many can fit!

Clean Up

1-2 minutes

1. Dump the spiders into a bowl or other storage container.

2. Throw away the tape.

3. Wash the bowl.

We started this activity with me demonstrating how to make the web on my own bowl. Let the kids make their own web, or at least attempt. Tearing tape is a great hand strengthening and fine motor activity for kids! Then we just started balancing the spiders on the web. After Vaila got the hang of it, we added a single die into the mix and took turns rolling and counting out our spiders to be placed on the web each time.

Vaila is nearing 4.5 years old and she absolutely loved this activity! The trick for keeping kids engaged is to find their just right challenge. The level of difficulty was perfect for keeping her interest without overwhelming her. Here are some progression ideas, but feel free to keep it simple, especially with younger kids.

Optional challenges:

• Use tweezers to place the spiders

• Roll a single die to determine how many spiders should be placed. Take turns or have your child keep rolling and counting on their own.

• Roll two dice and get some addition practice in to determine how many spiders should be placed on each turn.

• If your child is working on subtraction, roll two dice and have your child find the difference between the numbers each time. That is the number of spiders to be placed that turn.

The spiders were extra fun and a different material, but use what you have at home if buying themed manipulatives isn’t happening. We have used these spiders a lot so far this year and I plan to store them for use next year. It brought a good change of pace from our usual activity supplies, but maybe you don’t want to buy or store them. Use what you have- kids really are not that picky!

I’ll continue sharing Halloween and fall inspired activities for the next few weeks, but this is any easy low prep activity that you can get set up tomorrow!

Looking for other activities? Check these out:

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