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This is our street, it’s where we live
We love to play together
Be best friends forever
“It’s us!”
“Topsy,”
“And Tim!”
“Our friend Tig’s coming to play. Come on!”
TOY SPIDERS
Our friend Tig is coming over to play today. Tig always brings her spider cuddly toy, Woolly.
We get our cuddly toys out to play with Woolly. I get Eddy Teddy and Sausage Dog, and Topsy gets Little Moon Bunny.
When Tig arrives, she’s holding Woolly.
I hold Eddy Teddy and make him talk. “Hi Woolly, hi Tig.”
Tig holds up her blue spider and tells us that Woolly makes people jump.
“Like this,” Topsy says as she bounces Little Moon Bunny through the air.
We bounce on the couch with our cuddly toys. I hug Eddy Teddy and Sausage Dog. I want a toy spider too.
I jump off the couch and run to Mummy. “Mummy, can I get a toy spider like Woolly?”
“We can make a toy spider,” Mummy tells me.
Mummy gets out some plastic cups. I wonder what we’ll do with them. I offer to get pipe cleaners for the legs, but Mummy asks me to get the scissors instead.
I carry them carefully just like I was taught. “Thank you, Tim,” Mummy says with a smile.
Tig asks to cut them, but Mummy won’t let her. Tig sulks in the living room with Woolly while Topsy and I watch Mummy work.
Mummy carefully cuts the cups to make legs.
Topsy and I bend the legs into spidery shapes.
Tig runs back in. She seems in a better mood now, after some alone time with Woolly.
“Can I make a spider, please?” asks Tig.
Mummy cuts a cup for Tig, too. Tig bends the legs, looking at Woollys legs. Mummy suggests Tig cut yellow mitten feet, just like Woolly’s.
Tig cuts out yellow mitten feet, but I leave my spider’s legs as they are. Topsy is excited to give her spider eyes.
Mummy tells us spiders have eight eyes. Tig shakes her head. “Woolly has two,”
“Real spiders have eight,” Mummy says. I count out eight silly googly eyes for my spider. Topsy puts big googly eyes on her spider and runs out of room after five.
Tig only puts two eyes on her cup spider. I say it would be funny if she put extra googly eyes on Woolly, but she shakes her head.
Mummy helps us attach strings to our cup spiders. We put on puppet shows, making them dance with their strings.
We put on a play where the spiders chase Little Moon Bunny and Sausage Dog. Eddy Teddy tries to save them, but he’s even more scared of spiders. He runs away, faster than Little Moon Bunny.
Topsy puts on her Big Bad Wolf suit from our nursery school play.
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow you away!” Topsy growls at the spiders. She huffs and puffs, and I make the spiders hide. Tig won’t make Woolly hide.
Topsy saves Little Moon Bunny with a big hug. She’s not a Big, Bad Wolf anymore. She keeps everyone safe from the spiders.
I get our craft spiders again. We dangle them over the stairs. When Dad walks by, he jumps.
“It’s only our toy spiders!” Tig laughs.
While we play upstairs, we see a real spider crawling up Topsy and my bunk bed.
I cup my hands to let it crawl on them, but it crawls away.
“Don’t be scared, they’re spiders too,” Tig tells the spider. Woolly and our new craft spiders are a lot bigger than the real spider.
Topsy gets a clear cup to trap the spider under. We gather around, watching him crawl around in the clear cup.
“Our spiders are made from cups,” Topsy tells the spider. “Are you hungry?”
We take our toy spiders downstairs and ask Mummy and Daddy what spiders eat.
“They spin their webs to catch bugs,” Daddy hugs Topsy tight and pretends to gobble her up. Topsy shrieks and laughs.
Topsy and I get string from our craft bin. We make a big web in our bedroom for our new spider.
“Do you like it?” I ask the spider in the clear cup. “You’ll catch lots of bugs. Or do you like your old web? I like our house.”
I want to stay here. I don’t want to move house. Maybe our spider doesn’t want to move web.
Mummy laughs when she walks in and sees our web. “Are you making Woolly and the others a home?”
Topsy nods and points to our spider. “And him,”
Mummy jumps like Daddy had.
“It’s only a wee spider,” Tig says as Mummy puts a paper under the spider’s cup and carries him out to the garden.
“Please can we keep him?!” Topsy and I beg.
And that’s when Mummy says “In our new house, you can have a pet rabbit.”
Mummy lets the spider go. and the spider scuttles away to make a web of his own.
Daddy says we won’t have to make our new house, just move everything in. We go back inside our house, and Tig hugs Woolly tightly.
And that, said Mummy, was that.
“Are you good at remembering?”
“Can you remember what happened to us today. It’s our Topsy and Tim Memory Game! Let’s play!”
“Today, our friend Tig came to play, and brought her cuddly toy, Woolly. But can you remember what animal Woolly is? Is he a bear?”
“Or is he a spider?”
“The answer is behind the cloud… (a spider)”
“Great Game! That was good fun!”
“See you soon!”
We can play, day after day
And the fun will never end.
So let’s all play together
Be best friends forever.”