Creepy Spiders

The four year old students did a September spider art project.  On their papers we used oil pastel to draw horizontal and vertical lines and then two diagonals from corner to corner both ways.  We add 3 to 4 circles in the middle of the paper.  They each got a small brush and a watercolor well.  I gave them liquid watercolor one color at a time.  They had to use all of the color in the well before I brought more color.  Everyone had a wipe to clean their brushes between colors.  They painted the entire page any  way they chose.

 We discussed spiders.  How many legs?  What do they eat?  How many eyes can they have?  Why September is a big spider month with the adults maturing and laying eggs in egg sacks? We discussed how important spiders are in keeping down the bug population?  Why don't we touch spiders?

Their projects dried and during the next session, I painted one hand black and used their hand prints to make a big black scary spider. We added six eyes just to make our spiders creepy and a piece of yarn for a guide line.   With my extra time, we sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider  and acted out "Little Miss Muffet".  They really loved acting out the nursery rhyme and everyone wanted to participate.

I always elicit language from them by making them tell me one thing that we did in the lesson.  This part of the lesson can be super short if we are out of time or drag it out a little bit if their 30 minutes of time is not yet over.