Itsy Bitsy Spider Activities for Toddlers (Songs & Crafts)

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“Itsy Bitsy Spider,” or “Incy Wincy Spider,” is a modern nursery rhyme that is very popular among children and is one of our favorites at home.

This is why we created a full lesson plan with weekly activities to play and learn with this fun song.

At the time of creating these activities, my son was 2.5 years old, but some of these activities can be adjusted to older or younger toddlers. Kids develop at different times, so just judge what your child can and can’t do.

Lesson plan for Itsy Bitsy Spider

This is an overview of the activities we did, with a breakdown by day. Based on our homeschool schedule, we do two activities each day.

Our Products FOR Itsy Bitsy Spider activities

Some of the lessons used items from our packs. Download and print to make your activity set up a breeze. We also purchased a pack of 8 plastic spiders from the Dollar store, and we reused those throughout the different activities.

Itsy bitsy spider activities

Let’s get started!

Itsy Bitsy Spider Lyrics

Itsy Bitsy Spider tells the adventures of a Spider, named Itsy Bitsy (or Incy Wincy – more popular in England), who is going up and down, and up again, as the weather is changing.

The kids have to mimic the movements while singing the song, a very entertaining activity that helps improve their manual dexterity.


“The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout.
Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain,
and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.”

Itzi, bitzi araña Lyrics

Itzi, bitzi araña,
Tejió su telaraña.
Vino la lluvia,
y se la llevó.
Salió el sol,
se secó la lluvia.
Y Itzi, bitzi araña,
otra vez subió

Itsy BItsy Spider on YouTube (Bilingual version)

When I do activities, I like to include some reading in our lesson plans. I browse through a few spider books and choose The Very Busy Spider 🕷 by Eric Carle. I loved the book! It definitely did not disappoint me! And there is so much opportunity for language development and a variety of activities, including the different characters in the story. I love the spider’s repetitive responses, which allow for repetition and expectation. I loved that after a few readings, it left a few words out in the spider response, and my son was finishing it up! That is great for reading, speech, and vocabulary building. Definitely money we’ll spend!

Itsy Bitsy Spider Water Sensory Bin

One of my favorite sensory bin themes is using water. This is perfect for those babies and toddlers still putting things in their mouth. Using a colander, create a water sensory bin, practice pouring skills as well as taking the time to splash and start learning “sink or float” concepts.

Itsy bitsy Rice sensory bin

Age: Tabbies that don’t mouth everything and 2’s

Materials:

  • Green Colored Rice (color rice tutorial)
  • Blue Slime
  • Plastic Spiders
  • Wooden Sun
  • Paper towel Tube
  • Sensory Bin
  • (if you don’t have the spider, sun, or paper towel tube you can use the puppets from the Sing and Learn Spider pack)

This bin was a bit of an improvised bin. I knew I wanted to make one but I wasn’t expecting to do it right then and there so I just used what I had around, that’s why you see I didn’t have enough green rice and these are not an Instagram friendly photos lol. But he loved it and sang the song as he put the spider up the tube and down into the rain.

Why does this slime look weird? It was actually failed attempt to do slime with clear glue but the texture was a fun one. It is like Playdough got married with slime, so I let it and Manu loves it. You can use just Playdough or just slime to recreate the bin.

Itsy bitsy Spider finger puppets

Every month, I create a sing-and-learn pack, and this month, of course, it has to be Itsy Bitsy Spider-themed. These finger puppets are so much fun to play with! For little hands, we also did regular puppets, and that was a lot of fun to use!

Materials:

(For all ages, mom needs to make something for little learners to enjoy)

Itsy Bitsy Spider Sensory Bottle

Materials:

  • VOSS Plastic bottle or similar
  • Clear Glue
  • Plastic Spider
  • Blue Glitter

I love how ideas just come out of doing other activities. This was initially a spooky spider sensory bottle because Halloween is just around the corner, and when I shared it with my son, I started to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Ohhh I had purple glitter because it was a spooky spider but I’d I changed it to blue, then it would act as the rain!!

I dumped my spooky sensory bottle and replaced the purple glitter with blue confetti to make this one. This follows the same tutorial (15 sec video) as our spooky spider.

How to Make an Itsy Bitsy Spider Sensory Bottle

Add your spider on a VOSS plastic bottle (or similar).
Fill the bottle 3/4 full with warm water.

  • Fill the reminder 1/4 of the bottle with clear glue or clear soap (hand or dish soap works fine). The glue or soap will make the confetti and spider fall more slowly than if you just use water.
  • Add a small quantity (about a tablespoon) of confetti (or glitter)
  • Close the bottle and shake to mix the glue, water, and confetti.
itsy bitsy spider sensory bottle

Spider Web rescue mission

This activity was so much fun to set up! I had done this when Manu was a baby, and each time we have played with it has been a different experience. As he gets older, the challenge increases!

For this activity, all you need is a basket with holes on the side, white yarn, and plastic spiders.

Check the full post here for variations of this game for all ages and different ways to play it.

Itsy Bitsy Spider Matching Memory Game

Age: Tabbies to work on learning colors, and 2’s to practice on similarities and differences, as well as color matching.

Materials:

Also, from the Itsy Bitsy Spider Sing and Learn Pack, we used the matching game. I cut out each shape and cut out the backside using scrapbook paper.

Note: Cut out before you laminate, because if you laminate the pages together and then laminate, when you cut out your paper squares, the papers will separate.

I love this game because it can be a color-recognition activity for the younger ones and a matching game for older toddlers. Want to make it even more challenging? Then flip them to the back and play a memory game. Can you match them all?

Spider web art

Age: 2’s

Materials:

  • Construction Paper
  • Plastic Spider
  • White yarn or string
  • Glue

I love doing crafts, but doing them with young toddlers is tricky. They don’t have the patience to sit down and complete it or the fine motor skills to do detailed work.
They do, however, need to learn how to handle different craft supplies. Glue, in particular, is a tricky one to learn, so I decided to use some rope I had lying around and a spider from the pack I got for our sensory bin and our sensory bottle. (yarn would work out ok too)

I let him spread the glue all over the page as he pleased, then gave him string pieces, already precut, to place over the glue, creating a spider web.

Once completed, I added the spider on top and glued it to finish our craft.

Halloween spider sensory bin

Age: Tabbies that do not mouth, 2’s

Materials:

Spiders are common for Halloween, so we decided that combining orange and purple rice makes a great base for a Halloween sensory bin. We kept it simple, adding just a few spiders and some spoons and bowls to encourage transfer and scooping skills.

Spooky spider bath

Age: Tabbies, 2’s

Materials:

  • Bath tub
  • Orange Glow sticks
  • Plastic Spiders
  • Optional: Net

Our new thing around the house is themed bath time. Sometimes it’s for our morning time, and sometimes it’s, like, today, for our nighttime.

For the spooky spider bath, all you need are orange glow sticks and plastic spiders (we found both at the Dollar Store).

Fill up the tub and activate the glow sticks. Add in the spiders, and you are set.

If your little learner still mouths everything, place the glow stick into a water bottle. Fill the bottle with water if you want the glow stick to sink, or leave it empty if you want it to float.

Spider playdough tray

Age: 1 years old and up

Materials:

  • Black Playdough
  • White Playdough
  • Googley Eyes
  • Straws cut in half or pipe cleaners
  • Tray

Playdough is great for working on fine motor skills. Grab some black and white Play-Doh, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, cut-up straws, and a small tray, and create a spider invitation to play.

I created a spider web on the tray to set up the stage of our play. Because Manu is two, he cannot create the spider himself, so I provided two balls of black Play-Doh to form the spider. Then I showed him our plastic spider and how it had legs, so we used pipe cleaners or straws to create the legs. Finally, we finished by adding the eyes. The googly eyes are small, so he has to concentrate and refine his pincer grasp (pinching skills using the index and thumb fingers)

Spider 2D Shapes

Materials:

  • Spider Shape Printable
  • Playdough

Use this file folder printable to practice matching shapes. Use the color-matching spider sheet to match each shape.

Then, use playdough to mold and identify each shape using the playdough cards. Lastly, match the big and small spiders to the correct shapes. This is the hardest one, as there is no color guide to help your little learner match the shape.

This will be the real test to see which shapes he knows and which shapes he still needs to practice.

Last thoughts

Having a full week of Itsy Bitsy Spider was a lot of fun! I always aim to make a sensory bin, an art project, and some fine motor work. This week was a lot of fun, and we definitely enjoyed it! I hope you too!

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If you enjoyed these activities, it would mean a lot to you to share them with other parents and teachers who could benefit from them.

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