Ha, this activity is probably more suited to a creepy-crawly time of year like Halloween, but how do you keep a 4-year-old busy on the day before Christmas? With some good, spider fun, it turns out!
Travis spotted an old trove of spider rings in our craft bin, so we set up this game.
We needed a tissue box, and I let Travis go to town emptying the box and playing with the leftover tissues – something I wouldn’t normally encourage, but every once in a while, you need a sacrificial tissue box.
Ideally, use a green box. Ours had streaks of green as well as other colors, so I guess looked more like one of those tropical bright frogs – why not!
I made two big eyes for the frog, simply drawing black circles onto white paper and taping to the frog. Cut out the plastic around the hole of the tissue box, and your frog is ready to eat.
Present your child with the “frog”, a pair of tongs, and a set of spiders, and challenge him or her to feed the frog. Tongs are great for fine motor skills!
Travis would happily have done this all day. To throw in a little education, I asked if he could think of a pattern to feed the frog. “Black, orange, black, orange,” he suggested. Yes!
Next we tried rolling a dice, taking turns and feeding the frog the appropriate number of spiders.
When our frog got full, we simply dumped him out and started over.
Travis wanted other things for froggie to eat, so we found red pom poms, which he decided were poisonous bugs.
He even suggested we make a little mouth for froggie that could open and close, to keep all the food inside.
In sum, a great way to keep your kids entertained!
joyful parenting 