The most popular activity in Miss M's mind was definitely the spider web. I adapted the written circle time activity to help the kids work on letter identification. I taped off a web on the floor, wrote letters on various strands and then had them march around it while we played "Itsy Bitsy Spider" from the circle time CD on my phone. Periodically, I would pause the music (a la Musical Chairs) and they would have to scurry to a letter and tell me what it was before the music resumed. We played it all the way through with everyone and then Miss M wanted to play 4-5 times throughout the day. I had to wait until after she was in bed to take pull it up.
Another fun activity was the spider web weaving craft. We painted one of their hands, stamped it on the plate, then turned the plate around, matched up the palm and stamped again. There was plenty of paint left for the second set of legs and only getting one hand messy was more easily controlled. We punched holes around the edge of the plates, wrapped one end of a piece of embroidery floss with tape to make it like a needle (prevents fraying, which can impeded the sewing process) and taped the other end to the back of the plate, then set them aside to dry.While the handprints dried, we talked about how rabbits live in holes called burrows (I even have an adorable book called "In My Meadow" with a rabbit finger puppet that shows him in his burrow with his family at the end. I wish I'd thought to pull it out...). We used the provided dot and number cards to play "Holes". I scattered numbers throughout the room and the kids took turns drawing a card with varying numbers of dots, then hopped like bunnies to the matching number card. I was impressed by their ability to count with fairly good 1:1 correspondence with minimal help. I only did 1-12 because with just three kiddos, going to 20 would have taken longer than their attention spans would permit. Later that evening Miss M wanted to play this again. This time I laid the number cards out on the couch and had her pick a dot card, then hop that many times in place before finding the matching number. She enjoyed showing her daddy how well she can count and jump ("I a good jumper, huh Mom?" was uttered more than once).
We probably should have made the rabbit headbands before we played the Holes game so they could wear them while they hopped but I don't like to have the kids sitting for more than one activity in a row. I try to alternate between a seated activity (Circle Time, stories, crafts) and active games and it tends to work pretty well.
Our final activity was finishing our webs. Miss M has been using hers to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" for a few days now. This will definitely be one that gets saved.They were ready for snack after that (which happened to be cute rabbit shaped graham crackers provided by one of our friends) so while they munched, I reread the new version of Goldilocks provided by Mother Goose Time (this one encourages cleaning up and taking care of belongings, yay!). It was a great way to end the class.
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