Popsicle Stick Spider Web Craft

Make this fun popsicle stick spider web craft for Halloween this year! It’s a fun Halloween spider craft, and is an activity that kids of all ages could make and do. Add this craft idea to your list of Halloween activities to do this year!

HALLOWEEN SPIDER CRAFT FOR KIDS

When we think of Halloween for kids, we don’t want scary, but we do want a little bit of spooky! Halloween spider crafts are the perfect blend of creepy and crafty for kids. This spider web craft is so easy you can do it with preschoolers, or even upper elementary students and children as well!

We love spiders during Halloween! Make popsicle stick spiders, and even do spider science! This craft was such a fun addition to our spider learning!

TIPS FOR MAKING THIS POPSICLE STICK SPIDER WEB

Painting. There is an optional step where kids will paint the popsicle sticks, so if you choose to go that route be sure they wear art smocks or old clothes while crafting!
Glue. If you allow students to glue this themselves as opposed to using a hot glue gun, make sure they know not to use too much glue so their spider craft will dry faster.
Yarn. Prep the strips of yard for students in advance to make this activity go a little faster. You will need about 5 feet of yarn for each student.
Spiders. You can use this spider web craft as just a web, or you can add little plastic spiders with glue as the final touch.

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HOW TO MAKE A SPIDER WEB WITH POPSICLE STICKS

SUPPLIES:

Popsicle Sticks (3 per student)
Paint (we used acrylic paint)
Yarn (about 5 feet per student)
School Glue or Hot Glue Gun
Paintbrush
Plastic Spiders (optional)

POPSICLE STICK SPIDER WEB INSTRUCTIONS:

STEP 1: Each student will need three popsicle sticks, a piece of yarn about 5 feet long, school glue, scissors, white paint, a paintbrush, and a paper plate.

VARIATION: If you want to skip the painting, you could also leave the popsicle sticks unpainted. We liked the painting step as it made this activity take a little more time and gave little ones a chance to use their fine motor skills with a paintbrush.

MESS FREE TIP: To make this project as easy, and mess-free as possible, we suggest giving each child a paper plate to create on. If using in a classroom, have students write their names on their paper plates to help keep these popsicle stick spider web crafts separate.

STEP 2. Paint the popsicle sticks with an even coat of white paint. We only painted the tops of our popsicle sticks to make the painting a little less messy.

We used acrylic paint for this Halloween craft. It’s inexpensive, dries quickly, and easily washes off surfaces and little hands.

Remind students that if they paint with big thick globs of paint, it won’t dry quickly. It should take about ten minutes for the paint to dry.

PAINTING VARIATION: If you wanted to mix up the painting colors, you could use black paint or other Halloween colors like orange, green, or purple as well! Using just white paint cut down on the number of supplies we needed, and white paint is easier to clean as well.

STEP 3: While you wait for the paint to dry, you can cut strips of yarn. Each student will need a single piece of yarn that’s about five feet long.

Use fun colors with a Halloween theme like black, neon green, neon pink, bright purple, and orange. If you chose to paint your popsicle sticks different colors, you could also use white yarn.

If you already prepped and cut your yarn pieces, you could use the drying time to read a fun Halloween-themed book or two!

STEP 4. Once your paint has dried, you can glue the sticks together. Use a small dot of school glue and glue the first two popsicle sticks into an X pattern. Glue the third popsicle stick in the middle of the X shape as shown below.

When all the popsicle sticks have been glued on top of each other, they should look something like this. Let the glue dry completely before moving on to the next step. Kids will be handling the sticks pretty firmly, so it’s important the glue dries fully before moving on.

SPEED IT UP: If you want to speed this craft up a little, you can choose to hot glue the sticks together for the students instead of letting them use school glue. Hot glue takes about a minute to dry completely for handling, so it will shave about ten minutes of this project time if you use it instead.

STEP 5. Once your glue has dried completely, you can start wrapping the yarn to make your spider web. To begin, tie the end of your yarn onto the middle of the back of your popsicle sticks.

Have students wrap the yarn around the front and through each section in the middle as shown below. Younger students may need a little more support getting started with the yarn wrapping.

Then, to make your spider web with yarn, simply wrap the yarn over and around the popsicle stick, and then under to the next popsicle stick. Repeat over, around, under, over, around, under as you move around the circle of your web.

Younger students may need more support than older ones because this will use a lot of fine motor skills. Since it’s repetitive, repeating the pattern out loud worked well for us.

When you reach the end of the outside of your web, you can simply tie the end of the yarn to the last popsicle stick you wrapped it around.

When your popsicle stick spider web craft is finished, this is what they will look like. Each one will turn out differently depending on how the students chose to wrap theirs, the color of the yarn they used, and the color of the popsicle sticks.

We used this opportunity to talk about how each spider’s web will look different depending on the spider that makes it.

If you want to add plastic spiders to your little Halloween craft, you can use a dot of hot glue, or school glue and attach them to the top. You can usually find plastic spiders at the dollar store in a variety of colors.