Spiders and their webs were the topic of conversation this week.
We took a look at the characteristics of spiders in the book, Spiders by Gail Gibbons.
A sensory bin was filled with spiders of all sizes and colors. They all had 8 legs, though. We used tweezers and spoons to pick them up, as we sorted through them.
We had a giant spider web in our play yard. We played and sang to the tune of "Five Little Ducks"-
One little kid went out to play,
Along a spider web one day.
He (She) had such enormous fun.
He (She) called for another little kid to come...
Two little kids went out to play...
We made spider webs just like the spider in The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.
using a round cake pan and marbles dipped in white paint. We rolled the marbles round and round to create our webs. We each chose a spider to place in our web.
We sang and read a book by the same title
We dipped spiders in paint and sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" as the spiders climbed, jumped, slid and danced on our papers.
Decorating spider shapes with bingo markers made for some pretty fancy spiders.
To illustrate how a spider's web is sticky so as to catch its prey, we had sticky tape strewn backwards between two posts. We tore pieces of paper to use as a spider's prey. We threw the paper at the web to see if it would catch in the web. It took some experimenting...some successes and some failures, but we finally got the balled up paper to land in the web as we threw it.
We found a couple of resident spiders in our play yard... We left them where they were so as to not disturb them. It's fun to watch them each day to see how their webs change.
We all agreed that we don't really like spiders, but that we can tolerate them because they are very helpful in getting rid of pesky insects like flies.
