Spider Week!

That's right! I was brave enough to have a theme on spiders this week :) and BOY have we talked about spiders! I even had my students bring in spiders from home, YUCK!

MATH:

I had the students graph if they liked spiders or not. I used the "thumbs up" as they do like spiders and the "thumbs down" for they do not like spiders. MOST of the class liked spiders!!

We talked about the different characteristics of a spider and then I had the students graph pictures of a "Spider" or "Not a Spider"

I printed out pictures of spiders and put numbers 1-10 on each spider and had the students put the numbers in order. We also talked about 1st and last.

  

Each student got their own spider web and five spiders (I bought a huge pack of spider rings at the dollar store) I held up a number and the students had to put that many spiders on their web.

LITERACY:

We read the poem "Little Miss Muffet" The first day I had the students practice pointing as we all read along. On the second day, the students acted it out.

We read the book The Very Busy Spider (I'm a BIG Eric Carle fan) the first day and on the second day, I made a pocket chart book. This allowed the students to not only see the words but to follow along with a pointer while we read.

One of our small group activities was a spider puzzle! I did this by first calling out a letter. Then they had to point to the letter, find the matching letter puzzle piece, and then place it on their puzzle. When the puzzle was finished, it was a picture of a spider!

SCIENCE:

After reading Little Miss Muffet, we all wanted to know what curds and whey were so we did a little experiment: Mix 1/4 cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of vinegar and see what happens! YUCK! Don't drink.

Ever wonder how a spider doesn't get stuck to it's web!? It's because they have oily feet. I had two sheets of contact paper. The Students first touched the contact paper showing them how they stick to it. Next, I had them dip their fingers in cooking oil and then touch the contact paper again. THEY DIDN'T STICK! My students LOVED doing this :)

After talking about the characteristic of a spiderweb, we decided to make our own :)

ART:

We made spiders out of toilet paper roles, their hands and googly eyes

First, I had the student paint the toilet roles with black paint. Then I traced their hands on black construction paper. Once the paint dried, I hot glued on their hands (I cut off the thumbs so there would be eight legs) and the googly eyes.

Then my assistant and I made a web out of string and placed the spiders in the web!

The students made their own webs. They used glue to draw their webs, then placed their paper into a box lid.  (This helped keep the mess to a minimum) Then they sprinkled different colored sand on their web and shook the paper around making sure the sand completely covered the glue.(You could also use glitter)

 EXTRAS:

For a small group activity, I had the students draw webs in sand (I put it in small lids so that the students wouldn't get sand EVERYWHERE)

I had the students work on a spider project at home. They could choose from a list of activities such as: Bring in a REAL spider, draw a spider, take a picture of a spider, print off a picture of a spider, use art materials to create a spider..etc. 

These are a few of what my students brought in :)

 We had a wonderful week learning about spiders! I hope you got some great ideas that you can also do in your class!