5 Minute Pudding Spider Webs and Favorite Spider Books

If you're looking for something fun and festive to do with your kids for Halloween, this is it.  It takes about 5 minutes to whip up some of these Easy Pudding Spider Webs.  (Well if you're like me and using instant pudding mix and Cool Whip...if you're Martha and make pudding from scratch and whip up real whipped cream it might take a little longer.)

I've seen a lot of adorably spooky Halloween treats out there on blogs and have been trying to save the simplest looking ones on my Halloween Pinterest board, knowing I still wouldn't find time for most of them.  I'd had my eye on making these Spider Web snacks from Making Memories with Your Kids...but I forgot the pretzels when I went shopping, and I wasn't about to go shopping again.

And then it hit me...we could make spider webs with pudding.  Last year, we made pumpkin soup with Firecracker's kindergarten class and included sour cream spider webs in it.  (You can also do that with tomato soup.)  I figured we'd try doing the same thing with pudding and cool whip...and it turned out great.

Here's what we started with...

And of course getting to help make the pudding is part of the fun.

(Little Brother found that google eye somewhere in the house while we were cleaning up this morning...and thinking back to this fun activity, stuck it to his head and left it there the whole morning.)

Once the pudding is made serve some pudding into each bowl.

Add some Cool Whip into a ziploc baggie, seal it, and snip off a corner.

Make a swirl around your pudding.

Starting at the middle, pull a toothpick out to the sides.

And add a chocolate chip or two.  You could make these even spookier by adding a plastic spider...but I didn't know where any of ours were at the moment.

I was going to let the kids do their own swirls, but they wanted me to do that for them.  They were enthusiastic about dragging their own toothpicks though.

(Little Brother still loves his Mud Pi Shirt.)

Love that messy face!!

Before making our pudding treats, we read a few of our favorite spider books.  None of these are "Halloween" books, but I kind of prefer them that way.

My favorite of these is Sophie's Masterpiece by Eileen Spinelli is definitely my favorite of these.  A very talented and artistic spider goes out to make her place in the world, but is chased away from everywhere.  Finally as a very old spider she weaves a masterpiece baby blanket for a poor baby of a single mother.  This would also be a wonderful story to read to introduce a service project or blanket making project to your kids.

Spider's Lunch: All About Garden Spiders by Joanna Cole teaches some basic facts about spiders at a 1st-2nd grade reading level.  The illustrations are cut paper and fun to look at.

And of course The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle is a favorite.  The story is a little repetitive, but that makes it great for young kids.  My kids love the pictures because all the spider webs in the illustrations are slightly raised from the page and fun to run your fingers over.

Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin is another fun spider book, especially for elementary school aged children.  We returned it to the library months ago, so we didn't read it today and I don't have a picture for it.  I can recommend any of her "Diary of a..." books...they've got some great humor to them.

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