Making a Spider and Spiderweb Out of Straws

Letting your child make things out of straws is fun, quick, easy and relatively mess-free. Using simple and easy to find items that you probably already have around the home makes this a perfect activity and craft project for children of all ages.

What You Will Need:

Black straws (or plain straws you can paint)

Multicolor straws for the web

Googly eyes for the spider

A glue stick or PVA glue

Scissors

A few pipe cleaners

Instructions for the Spider

• Get all of your materials ready
• Start creating your spider. Firstly you have to start by making the legs. Cut a black straw (or painted straw) and take just 1 and ½ inches off the end. Repeat this 8 times. Do not throw away the cut off pieces as these will be the spider’s body.
• Once you have your 8 cut straws (legs) you are ready to bend them and create the leg shape.

• Now collect all of the 8 pieces you cut off the original straws which are now legs, and glue them together to make the body. As well as gluing you can also secure them in place by wrapping pipe cleaners around the body. Adding pipe cleaners will also give the spider a nice furry texture too!

• Now that you have the body and the legs it is time to attach the legs to the body. Flattening the end of one straw and then applying a bit of glue is the easiest way. You can then slide the staw into a gap in the body. It will be then held in place by the glue, and by the pipe cleaners.
• Once you have all of your 8 legs attached to your spider’s body, it is now time to add some little googly eyes. We added several just to make him look extra good.

Making the Web

• Take a piece of leftover card (or cereal card). We used the back of old toy packaging.
• Lay the card flat and start cutting your multicolor straws into different sizes. Remember the sizes do not have to be perfect as you are creating a web.

• Layout all of the pieces, we found that working from the outside in worked best.
• Once you are happy with all of the pieces and how it looks, it is then time to glue them in place, using PVA or using a glue stick. Once your web is dry it is now time to introduce your spider to his/her new home.