You can keep some plastic bottle caps out of the landfill by recycling them into this fun Halloween craft project.
Supplies:
- Plastic bottle caps like you find on gallon milk jugs
- Paint and paint brush for spider body
- Pipe cleaners for spider legs
- Googly eyes
- Glue (hot glue preferred but kids have more fun with school glue)
Let the kids paint the bottle caps. My kids love anything having to do with paint. Is that just because it can be so messy? We chose to make black spiders so we used black paint.
Next, glue on the googly eyes. Hot glue works the best because it is neater and dries quickly. However, my kids were begging to glue the eyes on themselves so I let them put the eyes on with school glue. It just took a little longer for the glue to dry but it works just as well.
Once the glue is dry, you are ready to put on the spider’s legs.
You will need to cut 2 pipe cleaners in half. Each pipe cleaner will make 4 legs. Throughout this project you can talk with your children about spiders so they learn a little along the way. At this point, we talked about how spiders have 8 legs and that this is one way that you can tell they are not an insect which has only 6 legs.
The final step is to glue the legs to the underside of the bottle cap. Take your 4 pipe cleaner halves the fold them in half. Then place them in the underside of the bottle cap. Cover with hot glue. I did let my children use school glue for this on our first attempt but it took too much glue, way too long to dry, and wasn’t nearly as strong of a hold as with hot glue so stick with hot glue here if you can.
Now hang your spiders on a spider web and you have a great decoration for your home that your children will be proud to have made.
You can even adapt this idea to make a ladybug by using only 6 legs and painting the bottle cap red with black spots.
About Kim
The are really cute creepy crawlers. I pinned them.
Because paint is fun. They’re super cute.
Super cute!
We are definitely doing this!! Great idea for the lady bugs too. Maybe we will make some stink bugs…
These are really cute! And you’re right, my son would be super proud to make them. We just made some Halloween magnets out of salt dough and he’s so excited to give them away and put them on the fridge where everyone can see them. I love seeing him take pride in his work. We’ll have to do this too. He’ll love it. Thank you for sharing!
We made these last year….http://www.sillyeaglebooks.com/2010/10/halloween-craft-for-preschoolers-bottle.html
cute idea! I always hate throwing out the bottle caps so now we can make a bunch of bugs
Very cute!! I hate spiders, but those are adorable!!
Thanks for sharing on WFMW!
I love this. Please link it to my linky party & anything else you have to share. Thanks, Peggy.
http://diycraftstomake.blogspot.com/2011/10/whacha-work-up-wednesday-weekly-linky_25.html