Itsy Bitsy Spider Fun

Bugs!

There are so many different bugs.

Can you guess which one we are playing with here?

Right, it's the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

 

I taped a large cardboard cylinder to the wall and made a cloud with rain drops from a paper plate and a sun from yellow paper.

The spider is tied to a string, on one end, and a pencil on the other.

She loves putting it back in the water spout.

 Dad came in to watch and noticed that the tape was already starting to rip away from the wall.

He had an idea to attach the tube to this wooden stand.

It works perfect!

We will be able to use this "tube tree" for other activities in the future.

Baby Spiders

I was so excited this morning when I discovered baby spiders

had just hatched in our classroom.

The egg sac must have been in our pot of dirt because

the spiderlings were coming from it.

It's so exciting to have real life science happen before our eyes so

I quickly set up an area around it for families to get a closer look.

As the morning progressed the baby spiders migrated up the wall.

The question "Where are they going?" was heard over and over.

It prompted me to put up a sheet of paper to document

the children's observations.

As the children watched they noticed a bigger spider and thought it was 

the mother.

But as we watched it we noticed it caught one of the little

spiders and quickly took it to a small hole in the window frame.

It did that over and over.

I don't think it was the mother.

Some families took advantage of the books provided to learn a bit more about spiders.

All morning as new families arrived they were invited

to check on the spiderlings to see how far they had moved.

We opened the window in hopes that they would make their way outside.

This afternoon before I went home I checked them one more time.

The spiderlings that were left were bundling into a group.

I wonder if there will be any left tomorrow.

Searching for Webs

Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider is a great story for exploring how
a spider builds its web.  It’s also a great interactive book with the many
animals involved and the sounds they make, encouraging the children
to say the sounds as you read along.

I saw a great idea from Miss Tara and Friends website to extend this story.

Each child is given a piece of yarn to add to a frame (I used a mesh screen).
I also stuck double sided tape to the frame to help build a web.


When the web was finished we sang, “The spider caught a flea, 
the spider caught a flea, hi ho the derry-o, the spider caught a flea”,
or moth, or mosquito, or bee, or fly.

Then it was time to head outside to see if we could find any spiders
and their webs.
 
It was a foggy day, lots of moisture in the air, which made it easy
to find webs covered with dew drops.

  
We used loupes, a high powered magnifying glass, to get a very
close look at the webs.

  
       Then made quick sketches of the one we liked.

     
    We found some busy spiders and crawling bugs.


      
Lastly we made our own spider web.  I brought out a paper frame
and contact paper.  As the families found materials for the web
they pressed it on to the sticky contact paper.  It’s now hanging
in our classroom window.

Spider Mini-Project

I often hear comments, about my program, that there are so many things happening.  I explain that a challenge for StrongStart facilitators is how to plan for a drop in program?

My centre averages about 30 children a morning which about three fourths are different children everyday.

This makes it a challenge for planning around the interests of the children.  With so many possible interests from so many children, how can I plan an emergent curriculum?

Another challenge may be that the children that are interested in certain activities may not attend at the time the activities are present.

Here's an example:
              
Last week as we were playing with animals that live in trees
one child took a strong interest in a spider in a web in the tree.  I
learned from him that he likes spiders.  His mom told me that he
likes spiders a lot.  The child asked if I had more spiders.  That was
my motivation to plan for this week.

  
At the beginning of the week the children were greeted with a book
and a message on the carpet.
 
They were encourage to help build a spider's web using tape.  Each
day more tape threads were added to the web.  They played with the
different sized spiders moving them around and catching bugs.
    
Another book, with props, was added and we began to sing
             Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Each day at the art table we created webs too.

       We wrapped yarn around styrofoam trays.
       
 
    We used magnet balls and wands to paint a web.
      
 
We printed webs by pressing a web design in to a piece of styrofoam
then painting over it before pressing paper on it to lift off a print.


      
There was black play dough with pipe cleaners and googly eyes to
              create spiders.

      
There was colour matching of spiders to their same coloured mat.

And we learned another song about spiders “There’s a Spider on the Floor”.

I gave each child a spider to use as we sang the song together.

There’s a spider on the floor, on the floor.  There’s a spider on the floor, on the floor.  There’s a spider on the floor, he came in through the door.  There’s a spider on the floor, on the floor.

There’s a spider on my toe, on my toe.  There’s a spider on my toe, on my toe.  There’s a spider on my toe, oh I wish that he would go.  there’s a spider on the go, on the go.

Continue having the spider climb up your body, stopping at different parts to make a rhyme.
 
These are the majority of spider activities that were available to play with this week.  Some will remain for next week.  And yes the child, who showed the strongest interest, did attend one day this week.
      
Tomorrow I’ll share how we tied up this mini project by searching for webs in the woods.