Spiders live among us; they are interesting and beneficial creatures. Spiders help protect our gardens by eating many of the insects that like to eat our plants. We learned that spiders can be found across the world and can live in a variety of environments. There is even a spider that lives in the water and makes a bubble web! All spiders have eight legs and have multiple eyes (either 8 or 6 eyes).
While we learned about spiders, we used rollers to paint over tape spiderwebs each child created. We made our own spiders out of paper plates, pipe cleaners, glitter, paint and googly eyes. We played a number and balancing game in the back room where we pretended to be a spider and took turns trying to collect our dinner from a giant web. We also rescued letters caught in a web on our large wall mounted magnetic white board. We read books about spiders and sang the “Itsy Bitsy Spider Song.
We ended the unit by thinking about what it would be like to be a spider. Each child dictated their spider story to their teacher. They thought about where they would live, what kind of web they would build and what kind of insects they would like to eat. Their individual stories were then captured and placed into their journals.