It’s officially Fall and I’m so excited to dive into our fun activities during this time of year. This week for our Literacy Snack Idea, we’re reading, A Very Busy Spider, by Eric Carle.

“Early one morning a little spider spins her web on a fence post. One by one, the animals of the nearby farm try to distract her, yet the busy little spider keeps diligently at her work. When she is done, she is able to show everyone that not only is her creation quite beautiful, it is also quite useful!”

This book is perfect to go along with an author study of Eric Carle, or during your spider unit. For our snack this week, the students are making their own very busy spider!

Ingredients

Each student will need

1/2 of a strawberry

1/2 of a green grape

9 pretzels sticks

2 candy eyeballs

just a tiny bit of cream cheese to use as glue

Assemble

To make the very busy spider, have the students take the strawberry half and carefully push a pretzel stick into the strawberry. Push the half of a grape into the other end of the pretzel stick so it holds the two pieces of fruit together. You can forgo this step if you want to it, just makes the spider more sturdy. Next, the students will take their remaining 8 pretzel sticks and add them to the very busy spider as the legs. Last, they will just need a tiny dab of cream cheese on their candy eyeballs and place them onto their grape. She turns out so cute!

While the students are enjoying their spider snack, I made a free printable for them to work on. They get to draw a picture of the very busy spider and the web she spun and remembering back to the story, draw what she caught in her web.

You can download the free printable from my teacherspayteachers store below.

If you’re working on a spider unit, here are some of our favorite spider activities to go along with this story!.

Spider counting mats using plastic spider are a favorite during our math center rotations.

And this spider craft is adorable hanging up in the classroom this time of year!

I hope your students have enjoyed their very busy spider snack!

We’ll see you next time!

Jenette