Does your child love Spiderman? Do you want to have fun together? Create your own spiderweb activity at home or in the garden. Read on for more details.
With thanks to Rachel, from South Africa, who sent in this great spiderweb activity idea. Let’s take a look at it…
What did you do?
We did a Spiderweb activity and game.
How it works:
This is a very simple activity that involves using any ropes, wool, and string that you have at home.
You can do it inside or outside but we find this a great outdoor activity and the additional space we have there really makes it a fun gross motor activity once we have set it up.
If your child is old enough to help to set it up, help him/her/them to look for items to tie the ropes to. We used garden furniture, the side of the fence, the edge of the trampoline. You can also bring chairs etc. outside.
Use your bigger and heavier ropes first and attach stabilising items to each other. After this, you can link the ropes with your lighter, thinner wool and string.
Once it is fully set up you can play with it in a variety of ways. We play tag running through it which is heaps of fun.
We also do a timed circuit and try to beat our time. Sometimes we pretend we are breaking into a vault and getting treasure and the ropes are the laser beams of the security alarm and we aren’t allowed to touch them.
If your child is younger, you can set it up yourself and then use it as a spiderweb obstacle course for them to climb in, around, through, over, under etc. It’s a great way for them to learn preposition vocabulary!
Why is it developmentally great?
In terms of learning and cognition, it’s a great early (or even for when they are older) maths and physics activity. But it pretty much aces a lot of basic foundation motor and planning skills too.
Coming up with the plan of how to position each rope, attempting to secure it, and adjusting the plan when it doesn’t work, is motor planning in action.
Using both hands together to tie knots, pulling the knots tight, and holding the ropes high above your head when securing them, meet a whole host of developmental motor skills.
And that’s before you are even playing in the spiderweb! Can you just imagine the body awareness and the understanding of your body moving through space and in relation to objects around it as you navigate your way through this tangled web?!?!
And the cherry on top ? It’s just so much FUN!!!
Do you have any other projects planned?
Today we’ll be making hose pipe pan flutes for fine motor and oral motor skills development.
Tell the Housebound With Kids community a bit about yourself…
I’m a mother of two little boys – Joey (5) and Benji (2). I’m also a children’s occupational therapist. I work a lot in parent and teacher training in South Africa and am passionate about sharing the knowledge and understanding behind early childhood development to give teachers and parents the confidence to help children learn and grow happily and spontaneously through play.
How are you finding lockdown?
It has it challenges for sure. And as a mother, there are definitely up days and downs days. I think we place a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents and often I need to remind myself that we don’t have to be the teachers or therapists for our kiddies too. That being said, the time together has been incredible and I’m pretty sure it is far closer to what we need as humans and families and children and parents.
Do you have any tips for other parents?
My biggest learning point is to follow the play. Instead of having a set of activities I want to achieve I try to have an arsenal of ideas that I can build on what the children bring. This means I can extend and grow what they choose to do making it a much more child-led approach. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, it stops my own disappointment when the activity does not go according to plan (as much as I try to check that I sometimes struggle to be process focussed instead of outcomes focussed). Secondly, the children are just far more motivated and engaged when their play is spontaneous.
Has this website and community helped you?
What a great resource. Giving parents the confidence to play with their children by giving them ideas and featuring real families is really great. Thanks again Vicky.
Click here for spider craft inspiration.
