Handprint Spider and Crayon Resist Web

Ellie has been obsessed with spiders lately, probably because spider decor is everywhere this time of year.  She has been asking many questions, so I decided to focus on spiders this week.

I love handprint crafts because their little hands grow so quickly.  I got some inspiration from the many handprint spiders I've seen on Pinterest, and I gave the spiders and webs my own spin, no pun intended, based on the supplies I have on hand.

I have construction paper, googly eyes and glitter glue, along with crayons and watercolors, so our spiders are festive and our webs rectangular.  First, we drew the webs on white paper with white crayon and then painted over them with lots and lots of very wet watercolor.  The paint doesn't stick to the crayon, and Ellie sure tried to prove the physics wrong.  Mikey needed more help with drawing the web, so you see a giant asterisk on his that I drew holding his hand.  Neither child cared much for looking at one color for too long, so their webs are - well - what's another word for festive?  Ellie seemed to feel sorry for me when she saw that mine was not "rainbow."  The wet construction paper takes hours to dry, by the way.

While the webs were drying, I traced the four fingers and palm of one hand for each child on black paper.  I folded the paper and cut out the hand, yielding eight finger-shaped legs.  I then cut out ovals for the bodies.  I helped the children apply glue to one of the palms and press the other palm onto it.  Then I helped them apply glue to the other palm and place the body.  I applied the glue for the eyes because they aren't quite good enough with the glue yet.  They very capably affixed the eyes, though, both kids!  I let them go to town with the glitter glue, but - thankfully - the glues were low and hard to get out.  Mikey wanted to affix eyes to all his glue marks, but I convinced him he wanted to be able to see the colors and glitter.  When we got home from swimming class and dinner, I helped them glue the spiders to the webs.  I placed books on the spiders so they would dry flat.  Ellie insisted on hanging the spiders in the family room first thing this morning.