Very Busy Spider

On Friday, September 21, while Joshua was in preschool, Caleb, Ryan & I read "The Very Busy Spider," a book that Caleb had brought home from the preschool library. In it, different animals make their sounds (the Cow moos, the duck quacks, the dog barks, etc) and asks the spider to come play with them, but the spider doesn't because she's very busy spinning her web. The coolest thing about the book is that the web and the spider and the fly all stick up off the page, so you can feel the items as you read (the boys LOVED this!). Eventually, the rooster asks if the spider would like to catch a pesky fly with him, and the spider does in her great web. At night the owl calls "Whoo who built this beautiful web?" but the spider doesn't answer because she's sleeping...she had a very busy day.

When we were done reading the book for the second (or third?) time, I suggested we make a spider and web. Caleb eagerly agreed. It was Ryan's nap time, so after laying him down, I found black paper and a white crayon. Caleb loved that the white crayon actually worked (typically when they try the white crayon, they don't see it show up on the white paper they're using). This cracked me up! Then we went through the book and tried to mimic what the spider was doing on each page. At times, I think the illustrator made random lines for effect, so next time I might take a different approach. But, either way, we made a web!

Then I went down to our paints and found our white paint. We had very little left, but it was enough for this craft. I painted Caleb's right hand, all but the thumb and he laid it on one side of the paper. Then, we touched up the hand and he laid it on top of the other hand print, facing the opposite direction. I filled in a little in the middle with the sponge brush I had used to put the paint on his hand. Here was our spider on the web!

I then did my hand on my web. It's a much bigger spider!

I asked Caleb to model his spider for me:

We had fun with our "very busy" morning making our own very busy spider.

We read the book several more times before returning it to the library, along with "Bob Lends a Helping Hand" about being God's servant by helping others with whatever we can do (like raking leaves, taking out trash or making our bed). It was a cute book as well.

Happy first day of fall!