Skip Counting Your Way Through Art

These Skip-Counting Spiderwebs are one of my best Halloween tricks (tips?) to keep your students focused and busy on Halloween day.  Seriously.  Let's face it - the excitement in the room makes it hard to settle, so it's not the time to start a brand new concept.  A few years ago I started to do this activity in the morning on Halloween, and we get in a great skip-counting practice and create an awesome art project with lines, shape, and repetition.  It's calming and mindful, and will take around an hour to complete.  Put on some low spooky music in the background, and your students will be engaged, working, QUIET, and learning.  

Integrating math and art isn't scary on Halloween.  To start these spirographs, you need a circle divided into an even number of numbers (make a dot and write the number) around the ouside (1-18, 1-24, 1 - 30, etc.)  The higher your number of dots, the more intricate the pattern.

You have to use a ruler for this activity - if the lines aren't straight, it won't look right.  Also, I would usually get students to work first in pencil in art activities, but not on this one.  They will be drawing so many lines, they will have no desire to trace back over every line when they are done.  We use extra fine tip sharpie markers, but any extra fine pen tip will work.

Starting at 1, skip count by 1 (dot to dot style), around the whole circle.  When you get back to the top (dot 30), start over, but this time skip count by 2s (join every second dot to dot).  Continue in this pattern, skip counting all the way around the circle (until you get back to the starting dot for every time around the circle).  

You can skip count all the way up to the twelves times table, or even further for a challenge.  Cut out around the circle (cutting off the numbers) when complete and glue your spiderweb down on some contrasting paper.

To add a little extra Halloween flair to our spiderwebs, you can buy some spiders at the dollar store, or make them with pipe cleaners and googly eyes, and glue the legs down so that they are crawling across the webs.  These make an awesome Halloween display of learning!

This art project isn't limited to Halloween though - brighten up your webs by using a different color for each skip count around the circle for a bright and beautiful spirograph!  Or start with an oval instead of a circle and create a gorgeous Easter Egg!!!  (I'm going to try this one next!)   Students can even color inside the little shapes made within the spirograph.

Click on any of the pictures in this post to take a peek at this Skip-Counting Halloween art lesson in my TpT Store.