Spider Handprint Craft – and a Cool Way to Paint a Spider’s Web

This spider handprint craft combines two of my favourite painting techniques for toddlers and preschoolers. Hand print art and painting with golf balls!  My hooligans loved it, and I’ll bet yours will too!

You can make this spider craft as a Halloween craft or if you’re working on a preschool spider unit, or just for fun any old day at home.

If you haven’t painted with golf balls yet, you have to try it!  Your kids will love it.  Handprints are always a lot of fun too, and if you’re concerned about the mess factor, take it outside like we did, or at the very least, have a big bowl of soapy water and a towel nearby so your children can clean their hands quickly and easily after making their prints.

Gather your supplies:

• construction paper or card stock
• white paint for webs
• coloured or black paint for spiders
• glue
• googly eyes
• paintbrush
• a couple of golf balls (marbles or bouncy balls work well too)
• cardboard box (one with a lid is good, but not necessary)

Painting your web with golf balls:

Place your paper into the cardboard box and drizzle it with white paint.

Drop in the golf balls and put the lid on the box and shake the heck out of it.  If you’re not using a lid, remind your hooligans not to go TOO crazy with this part of the project or you’ll wind up with painty golf balls bouncing out and onto the floor.

Every now and again, pop the lid off the box to see how your “web” is coming along, and have your kids continue to shake away until you get they’re happy with how it looks.

We placed our webs in the sun for a while until they were dry, and then we moved on to the next part.

The handprint spiders:

When the webs were dry, the hooligans picked out the colour of paint they wanted for their spiders, and I painted the palm and 4 fingers of one hand.  Do not paint the thumb.  Then they pressed their hand down onto their paper to make one half of the spider.  I brushed more paint onto their hand, and helped them overlap their palm onto the palm-print they’d already made, and they pressed to make the other half of the spider.

After a quick wash in the bowl of soapy water, they decorated their spiders with the googly eyes.

Lots of goggly eyes. 🙂

What do you think?

More of our golf ball painting projects:

Painting Fall Colours with Golf Balls

Golf ball webs and Finger Spiders

Golf Ball Candy Canes

Sparkly Easter Garlands painted with Golf Balls

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Jackie Currie

Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.