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.

What Lives in Trees?

                 
Awhile back I shared a post about leaves falling and how the
children played with chipmunks in and around our tree.
       
That led to a question, “Which animals like trees?”  and
“Who lives in trees?”.
  
As the children played they thought of animals that like trees; owl, eagle,
small birds, raccoon, and deer were a few they mentioned and I found them
as stuffies.
     
We started to gather quite a few toy animals and used a variety of
baskets for nests and homes.  But I noticed that the tree we were using
was limiting their play and understanding of how the animals used trees. 
       
So a new tree was created out of boxes stacked on top of each other,
covered with paper and holes cut into it so the animals could hide away.
       
More animals were added to the list; snakes, mice, bats and spiders.
          
Books were provided to help us answer questions that the children
have about the animals.