“The Weaver” by Qian Shi
Stanley is an adorable spider who has a big appreciation for beautiful nature finds. He is a great collector and initially tries to display and save his collection of treasures in his sticky web. However, the wind and rain wash away his collection and Stanley has to be innovative to find a new way to share and preserve his finds.
The story is not only so cute and inspiring, but the illustrations are absolutely charming. The Spring hues are beautiful and the whole and the fact that I love Stanley is a testament to how cute Qian made him. (I am terrified of spiders and not their biggest fan in general…) It is definitely a fun one to add to your home library and I highly recommend it.
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Spider Web Craft
The way that Stanley collects little treasures from nature reminded me of how my kids love to collect little treasures from nature. That is why when I read this book I thought it would be so much fun for us to make sticky spiderwebs inspired by the story for my kids to put their nature treasures on to display.
However, because we are still buried in snow over here we had to use nature treasures from a grocery store bouquet of flowers. It was still a lot of fun and we may have to give it a try again when they can collect their own from outside.
Supplies:
- paper plates
- contact paper (you can get some HERE from Amazon)
- black Sharpie marker
- scissors
- small leaves, flowers and other bits of “nature”
Process:
- cut out the center of your paper plate and leave the rim.
- Use your paper plate to trace out the amount of contact paper you will need to fill the center of the plate that you removed.
- Cut out your contact paper circle.
- On the non-sticky side/non papered side use a sharpie to free-draw a spider web and a spider on the contact paper.
- Now peel of the paper on the back of the contact paper to release the sticky side and stick your contact paper to the paper plate so that the sticky side is attached to the rim and faces upwards.
- Now you are ready to stick on any nature treasures you have collected!
When you are done a fun way to display them is on a window. They make lovely “sun catchers” and are sure to bring a smile every time you see them! If you give this Beyond the Book activity a try I’d love to hear how it goes! Share it on Instagram and tag me! (I’m on Instagram as @book.nerd.mommy) or even just comment here with your thoughts. It would make my day! Or to simply save for later pin the image below.
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