Spiders in the Sensory Table

This week is “spider week” at Preschool Inspirations, and we will be featuring a new spider post each day!

The spiders have overtaken the sensory table at my in home preschool, and it is providing a fantastic learning experience along with tons of fun. I am convinced that anytime the class plays with an activity for a combined total of three hours in the day, it’s a definite win!

I used our sand and water table. It is normally our outside water table, but I brought it in for this fall and winter as a sensory table for dry objects. It is a perfect base as there are three posts and lots of holes and crevices to build the web on. To build our web, I “spun” some yarn around our sensory table, over, and under, and through the open spaces. The more structure it has, the sturdier it will be. I learned this after our first attempt turned into a huge yarn wad after a couple of hours. Some of the older ones helped in the process, which helped build up a ton of excitement.

Once our home was complete, it was time to add the inhabitants. At first we put a bunch of bugs in it, and they loved getting them all tangled in the web. Then we added lots of spiders to the mix. We had stretchy ones, glow in the dark ones, and the plain simple ones too.

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We made sure to talk about how spider webs are sticky and carefully constructed.  The students have also been reviewing that spiders have eight eyes and eight legs.

It was my plan to keep this in the sensory table for one week, but we will be doing this for at least two weeks since the class has still been so engaged and interested in it.

If you do not have a sensory table with posts to wrap yarn around, you could modify this activity by turning an child sized table upside down and using the legs as posts to make your web!

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Katie T. Christiansen

Creator at Preschool Inspirations

Katie has spent 17 combined years in the Early Childhood field as a teacher, preschool owner, and educational writer. She has worked in profit and non-profit programs, high-risk schools, and started an in-home preschool and outdoor collaborative preschool program. She adores being a mom to three children, and her youngest is currently in preschool.

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