Sing action songs, finger-play songs and nursery rhymes on insects and spiders, such as "Little Miss Muffet" and "A Beetle," with your preschoolers. Model the sound effects for "The Ants Go Marching," such as boom-boom-boom, by clapping. Encourage your preschoolers to mimic the sounds as you repeat the song. Imitate a spider with your fingers in "Eency Weency Spider," and cue the children to sing along and use their fingers to form spiders.
Give the children play dough, pipe cleaners, toothpicks and construction paper to create spiders and insects. Instruct them to make a spider and an insect with balls of play dough. Children can use the toothpicks for the insect's antenna and the pipe cleaners for legs. Cut wings from construction paper that they can stick on the insect's body. Write down shared and different traits of the spider and insect on index cards, such as "eight legs," "six legs," "alive" and "wings." Place two hula hoops on the floor to form a Venn diagram. Have the children place the index cards in the correct area of the Venn diagram.
Take the children outside to search for a spider's web. Ask them what a spider's web is for and why a spider would spin its web in certain areas and not in others. When they find a spider's web, direct them to draw it. This activity will keep children from getting restless and tampering with the web.
Cut spiders out of black construction paper. Place red stickers on half of the spiders to turn them into black widows. Hide the spiders throughout the classroom. Tell the children to hunt for the spiders, and then count and sort them into two groups, regular spiders and black widows. Divide a felt board in half, each side designated for a type of spider. Direct the children to place the spiders in the correct category on the board.
Instruct the children to make insects and spiders with snack foods. Set out celery sticks filled with peanut butter and small raisin boxes. Direct the children to arrange the raisins on the celery sticks as if they are bugs on a log. Use chocolate cupcakes and black licorice sticks to make spiders. Cut the sticks in half and tell the children to stick the correct number of spider's legs into a cupcake.