1-2-3 Come Do Some More Spider Stuff With Me!
The spider shape activities are popular downloads, so I decided to do a few more spider-themed things. All of these lessons will help your kiddo's practice upper and lowercase letters. (To see the spider shape activities, scroll down for that blog article.)
Since the apple and pumpin clothespin "craftivities" were also very popular, I thought it would be fun to design a spider one too. I named him Alphie. Use my patterns to make templates; and then trace, cut and glue your spider together. I added wiggle eyes and black pipe cleaner legs for that extra pizzazz.
So that students can self-check, I've included a spider ABC chart. For more letter practice, I designed a match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter worksheet as well.
Alphie makes a wonderful independent center, or something for early-finishers to do. You may want to make a few extra spiders to send home with children who are struggling. I've included a note home, + a reminder note incase a family "forgets" to send Alphie back. Click on the link to view/download the spider alphabet matching game.
I had a request for some spider alphabet cards. If you collect ABC cards so you can change them each month, I have lots of themes available, and am always open to any requests visitors have for others. (diane@teachwithme.com).
I've also included a BLANK color, as well as a black and white set of cards, for you to program with whatever + a 3-page tip sheet of ideas for games and other activities that you can do with the cards. Click on the link to view/download the spider alphabet cards.
Because assessing can be overwhelming for little ones, I like to dream up fun ways I can do that. Assessing is time consuming too, so I did a lot of whole-group assessment to weed out the strugglers.
Playing "I Spy" is a fun game that enables you to see at a glance who is having difficulty. I designed a spider upper and lowercase letter bookmark that's perfect for an "I Spy" game.
Run off the spider bookmarks and give each child a spider ring or piece of candy corn to use as a manipulative. Whenever I'm using candy as a marker, I always allow students to eat one at the beginning of the activity.
It saves a lot of time reminding students that they cannot eat the candy 'til the game is done, and helps them enjoy the game and stay focussed better.
The teacher starts by calling out a letter, children move their marker to that letter and raise their hand to signal that they have "spied" it. The teacher then calls on a child to choose the next letter. Play continues 'til all of the letters are called. If you don't want to reuse the bookmarks each year, students can also circle the letters and then take their bookmarks home.
If you are doing an individual assessment, circle the letters the student does not know, write a note on the back asking parents to work on those letters and send it home with the child. There are also 6 alphabet worksheets for even more practice. Click on the link to view/download the spider alphabet activities.
Finally, if you're looking for a bit more, you may enjoy an older Spider packet that has a few alphabet activities in it, as well as lots of math fun. My kiddos especially enjoyed working with the paper flies and spider web sorting mats.
If you want to see all of the other spider freebies I offer, click on the link.
Thanks for visiting today. I hope you found something you can use for your spider studies. I'm off to check the basement after a ton of rain. Hopefully there are no disasterous puddles down there, or spiders for that matter. :-)
"Children don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." -Unknown
