I have to confess, I find crafting with the children a singularly stressful experience.
When the sprogs were still babies, I eagerly looked forward to a time when we could make stuff together. Misty-eyed, I imagined rainy afternoons spent bent over the kitchen table, glue stick in one hand, paint brush in the other, as we painstakingly created a magical castle made of nothing but loo rolls, or perhaps a Thunderbirds mountainside and launchpad from papier mache.
(Yes, I think it is possible that these imaginings were based largely on my own consumption of Blue Peter at a young age in the early 1980s…)
In actuality, now the kids are old enough to make things with me, any time spent attempting to craft anything tends to end with someone having a screaming tantrum and throwing a pair of scissors across the room. And it’s not always me.
The sproglet, in particular, just doesn’t like being helped with anything. If he’s making something, he has to be able to do it all on his own. Frustrations arising from necessary parental assistance tend to be high and volatile. Which generally means that gluing anything is out of the question.
And so I give you, the glue-free conker spider, arguably the least stressful thing I’ve ever made with the sprogs and perfect both for Autumnal conker use and a pre-Halloween craft.
It’s incredibly straightforward, but I’ve put together a bit of a how-to below in case you’d like a bit more info…
What you’ll need:
For each spider you need a conker, a pair of adhesive googly eyes, two pipe cleaners.
What to do:
- Pull the backs off the googly eyes and stick into place.
2. Cut the pipe cleaners in half, to create four small pieces
3. Starting with two pipe cleaners, fold them over each other to make a cross
4. And then add in the last two cleaners so you’ve got a star. (If this is a bit fiddly for your child and they’re not keen to wait while you do it, you can also just pull them into a little bundle at the middle…)
5. Fold over the very edges of the legs so that the spider will stand up
6. Using a small bit of sellotape, stick the legs onto the underside of the conker.
7. Repeat as many times as you like, until you have a small army of conker spiders taking over your house…
Pretty straightforward, no? Do let me know if you have a go at this by leaving a comment below. And if you’ve got any tips for minimising child-crafting stress I’d love to hear them…
Wolves in London 
I have no stress reducing advice but I really enjoy reading your blog for the “Briticisms”. I learned about conkers through a children’s book. Loo rolls is easy but what is Blue Peter? I could Google it I suppose, but I love leaving comments. BTW, my spell check has underlined cookers and wants me to change it to cookers.
Don’t you have conkers across the pond?! No way!
Blue Peter is a children’s TV programme, that was a bit of a national institution here when I was growing up. They always had wildly over-optimistic things you could craft with toilet rolls and old washing up liquid bottles, and I always used to get seriously cross when my creations looked nothing like the one on the show…
SEE! Auto correct switched it on me and I didn’t catch it
My favourite Blue Peter creation was the candle tinsel halo thing they did every Christmas, I mean what could go wrong with a highly flamable piece of tinsel, some wire, an open flame and a small child. Memories memories!
I think we call conkers BUCKEYES here. In fact, I live in the BUCKEYE state (Ohio).
The singly cutest use of a conker that I have seen ALL year! Thanks for the inspiration Sabrina – I have a jar of conkers on the sideboard that are screaming out to be transformed!
They are cool. Some people suggest leaving conkers out to stop spiders in your house!
Autumn is a fun time for crafting have you put a leaf under paper and rubbed a crayon on the paper, or leaf prints (has the potential to be really messy….) or string conkers together to make animals…….or get lost on Pinterest looking for ideas…….;)
Oh thank you so so much, I thought I was the only person who had these ideas of arts and crafts being a peaceful and joyful time when in actual fact it’s the most stressful time I can think of…. to the point I try to avoid crafts lol!
This looks like such an easy and cute idea and one that all ages of children can participate in and older children can do themselves. I hope to do this this evening after school, will let you know how I get on and the results 😁