Creepy Crawly Spider Legs Counting

Halloween is just around the corner (well, I suppose around the corner and down the street a bit).  But we are already getting into the Halloween Spirit at our house!  Jamie, form Hands on as we Grow has been on a Spider kick lately, which inspired me to do a spider activity too.  We have done oodles of monster activities, but no spiders yet.  So I decided it was time for some creepy crawly Spider Legs counting.

This counting game is ideal for preschoolers because it combines counting, numbers, and one-to-one correspondence.  Perfect for wee ones just learning about the meaning behind numbers.

The Materials for this Creepy Crawly Counting Craft (say that 5 times fast!) are:

1. egg carton
2. paint
3. paintbrush
4. googly eyes (optional – just added cuteness)
5. hot glue or white glue
6. pipe cleaners

First, I cut apart 10 of the egg carton ‘cups’.  I poked holes into each cup for the Spider Legs.  On the first cup I poked 1 hole (with the tip of a pen), on the second cup I poked 2 holes, and so on until poking 10 holes in the tenth cup.

Then we painted the egg carton cups. Sammy did 8 and told me I could do the last 2 (it was a lot of painting!).  We decided to paint them purple so they looked ‘real’ (I had suggested black, but Sammy showed me a Halloween Book with a purple spider – can’t argue with that!)

After they dried, I hot glued googly eyes and painted numbers on the back of each spider.  On the spider with one leg hole I wrote the number 1, all the way up to the spider with 10 holes getting a number 10.  I used nail polish because of the convenient wand, but any paint would work – or even white out.

Next I cut pipe cleaners into 4 pieces each and the Creepy Crawly Spider Legs Counting fun began!  I gave Sammy all of the spiders and all of the legs at once, but you could easily adjust this to use only a few spiders at a time.  Sammy carefully poked each leg into each of the holes – checking the number on the back of the spider and counting each pipe cleaner leg to be sure he had them all.

This was a great fine motor activity as the pipe cleaner was nice and sturdy and quite easy to poke through the hole in the cardboard egg carton.

I think these little spiders turned out super cute!  We may end up hanging them as Halloween Decorations too.  A counting activity, craft, and Halloween decoration all rolled into one!  Well, all rolled into 10!