Learn how to teach the “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” song to preschoolers. This childhood and classic nursery rhyme promotes movement and actions for kids. Caitie will be sharing some of her activity ideas on how to teach this fun song from Super Simple Songs. This song is perfect for ESL, EFL, preschool, and kindergarten classes!
Try some of these ideas in the classroom or at home!
- Before singing this song for the first time, show your students how to make the spider with your hands. It doesn’t have to be exact! It’s great practice for little hands to do movement and sing at the same time, it helps with their fine motor skills and developing manual dexterity. It can be tricky, but you can encourage them to keep trying, just like the spider does in the song!
- Try exploring the vocabulary in the song with your students, the words rain and sun, and up and down. Have them make the gestures for each one. You can use these words to introduce or review opposites.
- This is a great song for capturing students’ attention without raising your voice. Start singing the song in a quiet voice and doing the actions… your students will begin to become interested in what you are doing and try to follow along.
- Use this song in a theme about bugs and spiders! Make a spider craft and count the legs on the spider.
- In this version of the song, we sing about a big spider in a low voice. You can try other voices too, like making a tiny spider and singing in a high voice. Encourage your students to come up with different voices to try.
