Step-by-step tutorial
Step 1
See? Two ingredients are all you need for this recipe for fun!
Step 2
First, build your web. You can see my design here. This was fun to do with masking tape and withstood lots of play. I put a star on the middle to mark the "starting spot" (which later became the "finish line").
Step 3
Next, create your bugs. I just took pipe cleaners and folded a couple of loops for wings and wrapped it around to create something like a body. Really, you could just scrunch the pipe cleaner up (which is not far from what we did), and call it a bug. Or you can grab some rocks or paper, and give your "bugs" wings and eyes with a marker.
Step 4
Then, the fun begins! Here's how we played the game: Each player starts in the middle and gets 4 bugs. Scatter your bugs across the web (you could say you have to put one in each quadrant, and have a mini geometry lesson!). The player then scoots out on her web to gather up each bug. You can place different rules for each round on how the spider must collect her prey: walk on tip-toe, hop on one foot, etc. We timed each person to see how long it took them to collect all the bugs. It was pretty fun, and a great gross-motor activity to practice balancing on the web and bending down to collect your flies.
Final result!
After a bit of this, my kids decide to incorporate a new prop into the game: the ever-present Matchbox cars. So game variation #2 was born: Line up your cars & divide them into 2 teams (or however many players you have) Take turns giving your cars a big push toward the center of the web. Any cars NOT touching the web after all cars have been pushed are deemed OUT, and are removed from the web. Keep repeating the rounds until only one car is left. We completely stretched the spider web metaphor beyond its breaking point, but the kids thought this one was really fun, so please excuse the randomness of this game!
