Spider Season

Core Learning Experience

+ Supplies and Equipment

Possible/Expected Discoveries

Extended Learning and Other Curriculum Areas

•  Spider season in your area is a great time to go outside on a spider hunting expedition.  Take magnifiers, clipboards with paper and pencil and a digital camera.  Children can look at the (nonpoisonous and non-jumping) spiders up close, and then make a life drawing of one (doesn’t have to be accurate).
• Go inside and discuss what you have seen.  Read a book, discuss body parts and web making, egg laying and food.
• Spiders are not insects.  Describe the major differences large simple diagrams to illustrate your point

• Spiders are living animals.  They are not insects.  Spiders are arachnids, with 2 body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen), 8 eyes and 8 legs.
• Many spiders spin webs to help them capture food (insects) to eat, to stay alive.  The web substance is extruded from the spider’s body, and is sticky.  I wonder why spiders don’t stick to their own webs?

• Be a spider and spin a web - wind a ball of over and under furniture around the room
• Sensory box with natural items such as leaves, grass, rocks, small branches and some model spiders.
• Draw a directed “scientific drawing” of a spider – even 3 yr olds can do this.  Teacher labels.
• Make a spider hat – this is a black headband, with 4 legs stapled on each side, and 8 red circle eyes glued on the front.  Over 4s can use zigzag folding for the legs, and the younger ones can curl and fold them any way they want.
• Categorize animals that are insects and animals that are spiders.

I Love Spiders by Parker

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
The Itsy-Bitsy Spider by Ida Trapani

Spiders Lunch by Joanna Cole

Spiders by Gail Gibbons

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Info/Construction_of_a_web.html

http://classroomclipart.com/cgi-bin/kids/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Animals/Spiders (photos)

http://entomology.unl.edu/images/spiders/spiders1  (photos)