#finemotorskills #creative #nature | Cart Mill Family Centre

The children have shown an interest in spiders and today in the noisy and quiet room we decided to create our own spider puppets. We did this in the small world spider area that has been set up for the children to explore their spider interest further.

First, we had a read over one of our favourite spider books and discussed all the different types of spiders you can get . We found out that the first spiders lived about 300 million years ago, even before dinosaurs roamed the earth. We found out spiders are not insects and most spiders are web weaver some, weave sheet, funnel shapes webs, triangle webs and the Orb spider spins a beautiful pattern of many different circles .

”That’s my favourite one he’s called the Tarantula and he is very hairy “

”That goddess turned into a spider”

” This spider has got 10 legs “

we then set to work creating our own spider puppets, for this we used paper plates, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue, sellotape and some pencils.
we began by sticking our googly eyes onto our paper plates and by doing this first it allowed us to see where the holes for our spider’s legs should go.

“ I am going to put on eight legs on my spider “

“ my spider is a daddy one”

we used the tip of a pen to carefully poke holes for our fingers to go through to create the spider’s legs. Some of us wanted more legs for our spider so we decided to use pipe cleaner to create more .

look at our lovely spider’s!

The children enjoyed making their spider puppets whilst learning lots of facts about spiders and developing their fine motor and language skills.
why not give it a try at home and make your own spider puppet and put on a puppets show! Let us know how you get on, have fun!🕷

The children have been really enjoying learning about the weather whilst in the garden. With the season changing we have seen lots of different weather recently! We decided to make suncatchers and hoped this would bring the sunshine back! Instead of just using coloured paper, we wanted to add some natural materials. We went on a walk to collect pretty blossom that had fallen off the trees and any other materials we could find!

“I’ve found some pink blossom and white!”

We used sticky clear paper to stick all our flowers and coloured tissue paper to. We then folded it over and it stuck the edges together!

“I want yellow paper like the sun!”

“Ah, it’s so sticky my fingers are all stuck!”

We cut them into a nice shapes and then used all our strength to punch a hole in the suncatchers using the hole punch.

“Look, I got it, I’m so strong!”

Finally we threaded some ribbon through the hole and hung them up in the garden! The children had great fun making these whilst developing their gross and fine motor skills.

“They look so pretty!”