Charlotte’s Web was one of my favorite books growing up, and I couldn’t wait to share this timeless classic with my own kids.

My kids fell in love with Wilbur and Charlotte, and we had fun discussing character traits while doing this Charlotte’s Web activity.

Charlotte’s Web is a wonderful read-aloud book for several reasons:

• The story and the characters pull the reader in.
• It is a story of friendship, loyalty, and love.
• And I love how Charlotte introduces new words to Wilbur (and the reader) throughout the story.
• The book is also great for teaching about character traits.

Charlotte’s Web Activity

Charlotte uses her web to bring attention to how she feels about Wilbur.  Her words make Wilbur feel differently about himself.

Charlotte’s Web is a great book to teach kids on how our words can affect others. 

We decided to create our own webs and add positive words to describe our pets in our activity.   In the classroom setting you could choose to  have students find words to describe a friend or family member.

Charlotte’s Web Craft

Materials Needed:

• White Craft Paper
• Ruler
• Black Colored Pencil
• Old Magazines with Plenty of Advertisements

In the book when Charlotte first writes a word on her web, she keeps the existing radial lines and removes the orb lines of the web.

We discussed what each of those terms meant as we drew our own spider webs on white paper.

I showed them how to use a ruler to create those straight radial lines, intersecting them all at the center of the web. Then they free-handed straight lines connecting each radial line to form the circling orb lines.

Once the webs were drawn, we searched old magazines for advertisement pages.

We chose to focus on the ads for this kids craft because they always have positive words, usually written in a large font, which makes it quick and easy to scan and find the words or letters you are looking for.

We found multiple ads using the word “best;” we were also excited to find words like “super” and “great.”

Whenever possible they used the words they found in the ads.  If they couldn’t find the words they wanted, they searched for each letter to carefully cut out and glue in place.

My daughter had fun thinking of just the right words to describe our sweet kitten.

My son chose words that accurately describe our dog.

They enjoyed this simple Charlotte’s Web activity, but I worried about how each of my kids would react at the end of the book.

Would they cry?  Would they still like the book even if one of the characters they had grown to love died?

I needn’t have worried.

Not only did they like the book, but they loved the kindness that Charlotte showed her friend.

And the end, where three of her children chose to stay with Wilbur, left them happy.  And I was able to wipe  away my own tears without them noticing.

If you liked this Charlotte’s Web craft, you may also like: 

• Charlotte’s Web-Inspired About Me Craft from Steam Powered Family
• Paper Plate Spider Web & Pom-Pom Spider (Just like Charlotte!)
• 25 Dr. Seuss Book Activities 
• Fun Ways to Practice Spelling Words

Originally published September 19, 2016. 

The post Book Activity for Charlotte’s Web first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

You hear them chattering up a storm; see them scampering along branches as they collect nuts…  And at our house, on the weekends, see them up close and personal when OneDaddy goes hunting in the morning.

It just makes sense that my animal-loving kids are nuts about squirrels right now.

So when I stumbled upon Hello, Squirrels!  at the library, I couldn’t resist bringing it home so we could learn all about what squirrels do each season.

The kids loved seeing the beautiful drawings of pink baby squirrels and watching them grow up as we turned the pages and the seasons changed from spring all the way to winter.

After reading the book several times (a must around here with any new book), we were ready to pretend to be squirrels.

First we built a nest with the leaves that have fallen so far.   The book shows how the nests are made with sticks and leaves in the crooks of tree branches.  Monkey tried to recreate that on a big rock… 

But eventually he decided the pile on the ground was a little cozier.  So, he joined his sister in the nest …and they both stretched out to see how it felt.

After a little break from all their hard work (wait a minute… that was ME raking most of those leaves…), the “squirrels” went to find the nuts they had buried earlier…

The night before our squirrel fun, I had each of them bury an acorn in an egg carton.  The goal was to see if they could remember which space they had buried their nut, just like real squirrels have to find their buried acorns in the winter.  My almost 5 year-old found hers right away.  It took the 3 year-old a couple tries to remember which hole he had hidden his acorn in.  Once they found their acorns, they had fun burying them and digging them up over and over…. (A cookie sheet under the egg carton kept the mess to a minimum.)

We also talked about what happens to all those acorns the squirrels don’t find during the winter.  I’m thinking we are going to have to plant a few acorns of our own to see if they will pop up as seedlings next spring!

And to end our squirrel festivities we colored a few simple squirrel pictures I had printed off the Internet.  By that time my little squirrels were ready to be free,  just like the baby squirrels in the book who eventually left the nest to do their own thing.

The post Hello, Squirrels! first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.