We’ve been having a bit of fun with our cute little yarn spiders. We play a little game with him, he’s been hiding all over the house. It can be a little spooky finding a GIANT spider in your sock drawer!
Pipe Cleaner Yarn Spiders
It can get a little nuts all the places we hid him. For the game: I place the yarn spiders in my son’s room under his pillow, and once he finds him, he’ll hide the spider some place else. This is fun to play all month long!
For a classroom party game:
*a bit like “Hot or Cold”
One child goes out of the room and another child hides the spider. The one child comes back into the room and tries to find it. All the other children in the room can say if the one child is getting “hotter” or “colder” with the hidden spider, meaning closer or farther away. Once the spider is found, play again.Kids always love this game!
Make your own yarn spiders, watch our video:
Supplies:
- black yarn
- 2 black pipe cleaners
- scissors
- cardboard piece 1.5 x 5 inches
- 2 googly eyes
- glue
Instructions:
1. Bend your piece of cardboard in half lengthwise. This helps with adding pipe cleaners later.
2. Wrap your yarn around the cardboard piece 75 times. You can go more or less times around, but this is best for this size of spider. Once you’re done wrapping, cut off the yarn a few inches off of the ball. Let it hang, later it will get trimmed.
3. Cut each pipe cleaner in half, so you have 4 smaller halves. Slide them through the center of the yarn ball, while it’s still on the cardboard. You will want to thread them through one at a time.
4. Once all 4 pipe cleaner pieces are through, carefully slide it all off of the cardboard.
5. Bend 4 of the pipe cleaners to the left and 4 of the pipe cleaners to the right, top and bottom (see photo below).
6. Twist all 4 of the right side of pipe cleaners together 1-2 times. Twist all 4 of the left side of pipe cleaners together 1-2 times.
Once it is all twisted together, you can trim off the extra piece of yarn, don’t worry, it will hold.
7. Bend each of the pipe cleaner ends in half, creating it’s “legs”.
8. Glue on 2 googly eyes to one side of the spider. Let him dry for an hour or so before playing.
Have fun hiding your little spooky spider for Halloween!
We did this craft today and LOVED it! Thanks for providing this!
Very cute–but I think you need to tweak the directions a little bit. A 1″ by 1.5″ piece of cardboard is way too small and in the pictures it looks closer to 1″ by 3″.
Thanks, Jennifer. I actually did use a 1-1/2 in width by 5 in length of cardboard to make the above spider. The length of the cardboard doesn’t matter as much as the width. You are welcome to cut a 1 1/12 by 3 inch piece.
craft for Halloween party
Love it,thanks for such a nice work .
we have had the best time with our spiders! DS named his “spidey” and comes home from kindergarten every day and hunts him out to talk with him about his day and share a snack! DD’s spidey is less vocal but still beloved! They picked different colored pipe cleaners for the legs so we can tell them apart! And DD decided to glue a pom pom to her spidey’s head for a hat!
I LOVE the idea of different colored legs. Good thinking to keep them apart, as we have 3 black ones! I’m so glad he’s having so much fun, thanks for sharing!
I love your ideas and crafts. This one is so cute and just the perfect size bug I needed for my spider web but I could not get mine to look like yours. I got it so the yarn looked like an oval but must not be twisting right or something because I can not get it round and neat like yours. I was slightly disappointed. I wish it had worked really thought they were cute. maybe next time.
Love the idea of using yarn (we always just grabbed pom poms but I think my daughter would enjoy winding the yarn)! And what a cute game. I think it would also work to teach the concepts of over, under, next to, left right, behind, in front of…or with older kids to teach that vocabulary in a second language…
THANK YOU SSSOOOOO much for printing this today! I am in charge of my scout troop this weekend for a campout. I need easy to make crafts that we can do to fill time. This is so perfect! I even have everything on hand. we will be making these and if they want, we will play the game as well! I just had to share my extreme thanks for saving me a bit of pre camp stress!
Yay! I love when it’s good timing. Have fun with your scout troop!
so cute Marie! :)
The only spiders I like:)