Making the Spider Letter Swatter
- The first thing you need to do to make the spider is to gather the materials. You will need a plastic lid a little larger than than swatter, a bug swatter, a pipe cleaner, two large wiggly eyes and a black plastic trash bag.
- I cut a four strips out of the plastic bag for the spider’s legs.
- The strips were the woven through the slits in the swatter. I tried to space the legs three rows apart.
- Two holes were placed in the plastic lid and a small section of the pipe cleaner was placed through the holes.
- The lid was then attached to the fly swatter by putting the ends of the pipe cleaner through to holes in the fly swatter in the same row. The end of the pipe cleaner were then twisted down to hold it in place.
- A rectangle the length of the head of the fly swatter was cut out of the bottom of the plastic bag. By cutting it at the bottom you have two rectangles attached in the middle.
- The plastic bag cutout was placed over the fly swatter with the creased area from the bottom of the bag at the top.
- The plastic bag needs to be pulled tight and secured at the base of the flapper or head of the fly swatter with a small section of the pipe cleaner. We just wrapped the pipe cleaner around and around a few times.
- Then attach the eyes to the spider’s head. You can place them any where on the head that you want to.
Alphabet Activity
When you have created your spider swatter, you are ready to play the alphabet game. We played a couple of versions of this game. The first was to say the letter and what sounds it can make. I stuck with the sounds you hear when you first say the letter sounds. (Some letters make more than one sound. I didn’t really get into that.)
The second version of the game called for saying a word that starts with that letter sound. We both took turns trying to come up with as many words as we could for each letter. I tried to stick with coming up with new words that JDaniel might not have heard before. It was an attempt to increase his vocabulary at the same time that we work on letter sounds.
The third version of the game was trying to come up with words that end with each of the letters. This was little bit of a challenge, but we were both up for a challenge.
Do You Have Other Spider Ideas?
We have talked about spiders a lot on this blog. We made a spider web trellis in our backyard. There was a spider web themed muffin tin lunch. A math game used rubber spiders and pumpkin seeds.
Book That You Could Read and Explore
Halloween Bugs: Halloween Bugs (David Carter’s Bugs)is a really special flap book. It is filled with little doors that creepy crawling bugs hide behind. My son loves to guess what is behind each door. I think younger children will be filled with excitement as each door is opened.
This is the kind of book that you might want to read is a fun voice. I love reading it that way.
You will find more early learning activities on my Early Learning Pinterest board.
