Hello there, are we ready to start! So get your resources ready and lets go!
In this project we are going to make a SPIDER! (Arachnid) My interpretation of a basic spider, easy to make and for the younger ones. We are going to use from your recycle collection, inner tubes of either kitchen towels, or toilet rolls.
In October it’s Halloween season and spiders are in abundance. High and low, on windows on trees, plants on washing lines, on doors frames and on cars, in our gardens on bushes and branches and just simply in your face!!! When the weather gets cold, they venture inside your homes, finding cracks and crannies corners or high up to take comfort and spin their webs. How eerie, so lets keep this in mind when making our spiders from inner tubes. We can make them hairy and scary and creepy!
Large ones, small ones and ones with long legs, short legs, black or brown ones, even yellowy green ones, some with a bit of red or even white ones! tiny ones even Incy Wincy ones so cute… Oh Noooooo!!!
Did you know spiders have up to 8 eyes, sometimes 6 or fewer eyes, but they are always even in numbers. They also have poor eye sight so they rely on vibration, taste and stimuli to navigate and find
their prey.
I remember when back in school we had to analyse garden creatures and I discovered a spider cocoon on a leaf, I carefully priced it off and took it to school to analyse it under a microscope. There was a light directed on it so I could see more clearly, in the process there was a fair amount of heat generated towards it. I detected tiny black dots inside the cocoon, noting these were baby spiders.
So being the carer of now my responsibility, I took it home with me in a container. It wasn’t until I reached home that there was activity in my school bag, having had a look to my surprise the cocoon had hatched and tiny baby spiders were crawling all around my school books, inside my bag.
I rushed into the garden and carefully took my books out and then shook my bag over the closest bushes! I had never contemplated anything like this to happen. I was happy and sad at the same time, almost like letting go of a bird back into the wild.
The next day I rushed out into the garden to see if there was any evidence of the day before and to my surprise, there was tiny little webs everywhere, with the morning dew dripping and gleaming from their tiny little creations. I felt like a proud Mum and so please they survived this adventure. It is a memory I will never forget and had loads to write about and so ecstatic with my findings.
So lets move on. For argument sake lets go with 2 eyes to start with and we can spook it up by adding more if we need it.
What you need for the Incy Wincy Spider :-
1 kitchen towel inner tube
Scissors/sellotape
2 googly eyes
Some black shredded tissues paper
Black paint/brush
PVA glue (in bottle)
Here are the instructions.
(1) Cut the inner tube in half.
(2) Mark up with a pen about 20mm wide and 50mm/60mm in length for the front part.
(3) Squeeze the tube together holding firmly so that you can cut front and back at the same time.
(4) Mark up 4 legs either side and cut parallel to each other.
(5) Now paint the whole tube with the black paint outside and the underside of the legs. Leave to dry.
(6) Glue around the top, head area and add shredded tissue making a head of crinkly hair, cut accordingly.
(7) Glue the googly eyes on the tube where you would like them.
(8) Squeeze glue along each leg and stick shredded paper on them, then cut and neaten them off.
(9) Cut 2 pointed fangs, and use a bit of sellotape to stick them on the underside of the tube, under the front panel.
(10) Cut a smiley mouth to size from the pink card and stick above the fangs. Bend each leg to shape.
TIPS
Because of the glue its all a bit tricky and bits of paper will stick to your hands, maybe have a wet wipe to clean up the glue from your fingers. Use sticky tape or sellotape to secure the fangs on the underside of the tube also sellotape up the underside of the legs to the inside of the tube to toughen them up a bit as they may become fragile, although the paint would harden up when dry. You can use toilet roll inner tubes, providing they are clean or simply use the inner tube of a kitchen towel cut in half. Allow to dry and Viola you have an Incy Wincy Spider where you can use when singing the Incy Wincy Song or for a Halloween decoration.
YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW THE VIDEOS WHICH DEMONSTRATE FURTHER. Enjoy 🙂 This is my first attempt to video the demos, so I hope you like them! (Materials were purchased at www.hobbycraft.co.uk)
Incy Wincy Spider went up the water spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out, out came the sun an dried up all the rain
and the Incy Wincy Spider went up the spout again! (Repeat) HOORAY!
Incy Wincy Spider grew up and became Bigsy Wincy Spider, even bigger now, quite ferocious and full of attitude and glorious with it. More scary, more hairy, more daring and has more eyes on you! So lets gather your resources.
This time you will need:-
Black thick yarn 100g (to make a pom pom)
4 black pipe cleaners/1 long piece of thinner yarn
4-6 googly eyes
4 strips of double sided tape
2 toilet tubes/kitchen towel inner tube
Sellotape
A piece of white card for fangs
Scissors/Elastic band
A piece of black hard card (50mmx70mm)
(1) Put 2 tubes together hold together with 1 elastic band then start to wind the thick wool around the middle part at least 100 time.
(2) Wrap the single yarn around the middle part to secure the ball of wool together, whilst doing this pull out the 2 tubes.
(3) Tie the yarn tightly almost looking like a bow. Using the scissors run it into the hooped part and cut both sides, so you have 2 fringes.
(4) Now spread the wool and fluff it up, making a puffy pom pom ball. Trim odd bits and cut to form a round ball.
(5) Take the piece of card and stick the 2 strips of double sided tape. Line up the 4 pipe cleaners evenly and centred. Press firmly. (cut the sharp corners off the card)
(6) Apply 2 further strips of double sided tape on top of pipe cleaners and then stick on the underside of the pom pom, vertically.
(7) Prepare the googly eyes by sticking double sided tape on each eye and trim, then stick on pom pom, where you like.
(8) Finally run a piece of double sided tape at one end of the white card. Cut 2 fangs out, making sure tape is at least half way down.
(9) Stick each fang on the card under the pom pom bend them accordingly, also Bend legs to shape. Trim unnecessary bits of yarn to neaten off. Now you have the more mature spider GROWL!!!
TIPS
I avoided PVA glue as it can be quite messy, especially using wool, might be difficult to control. Try to use a solid piece of card to attach legs on it, anything weaker will not hold the pom pom up and could cave in, also the pipe cleaners need a solid base to be attached which would support the pom pom. If you don’t have a solid piece of card, use any cardboard box and cut it out from that, paint it black. Or if your card is thin, layer it up with 2 or 3 pieces of card to strengthen it up. Stick together with a glue stick or double sided tape.
The piece of yarn that’s used to tie the pom pom up in the middle, if left without trimming, can be use to hang the spider high up. You can get hold of googly eyes that have sticky tape on them already, this is less time consuming. After you have made your pom pom spider, you may have to occasionally check googly eyes, as they may need securing, as they may loosen up if spider is shaken about a lot. Same applies to the legs and the panel.
For effect you can use pleated cotton wool and pull it apart to give the allusion of cobweb.
To summarise
Here are instructions on how to make a simple spider using cardboard tubes for the younger children, listing resources and explaining the process and then taken further by showing how you can make this project a little bit more interesting for the older children, where they can handle more difficult tasks. I put together 2 videos, demonstrating how to make both versions of these spiders. One for Incy Wincy Spider and one for Bigsy Wincy Spider.
So let’s have some fun making these projects.