Spider Unit


Books: The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Spiders
I See A Bug
Charlotte’s Web
I Love Spiders
Be Nice To Spiders
The Very Busy Spider
Like Jake and Me
The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly
Miss Spider’s Tea Party

Book Groups:

(I use the following books)

The Itsy Bitsy Spider
I See A Bug

Poems and Songs:


The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Little Miss Muffet
Witch’s Brew
The Spider Poem
The Silly Itsy Bitsy Spider Activities:
Discuss that spiders are arachnids and are oviparous (lay eggs)
*Thumbprint spiders- I usually have the children do this in their journals and then write about spiders. They make their thumbprint with paint or stamp pad and then draw 8 legs on it. You could put two thumbprints together to make it have two body parts.

*Spoon spider- Take a plastic spoon (I use black ones), turn it upside down and use a twisty to tie a Tootsie Roll pop under the spoon. Then you glue a black pom pom on top of the spoon and glue on eyes. Use pipe cleaners for legs.


*Spider booklet- We make a spider booklet with spider facts on it.

*Spider headband- Have the students paint or color a sentence strip black. Then have them take 8 thin strips of black construction paper and fold back and forth. Then staple the legs to the sentence strip and fit to children’s heads.

I have the children trace and cut two circles, fold and glue on 8 thin strips of paper and attach a string and hang from ceiling.

*Glue spider web- have students draw a web on black paper and then trace it with glue. When it dries it looks like the web from The Very Busy Spider.

Spider crackers-Using circle crackers, make a peanutbutter cracker sandwich, put 8 pretzels into the peanutbutter in the sandwich. Glue on 2 m and m’s for eyes using peanutbutter as glue.

*Egg Carton Spider-Cut cardboard egg cartons into six sections, each having two egg cups. This will create a spider with two body parts. Paint the egg cups and glue on eyes. Using four 12” pipe cleaners, poke the pipe cleaners into the egg cup and bend them to form a set of legs. We do sequence cards for the lifecycle of a spider

*Class web- Have the students sit in a big circle. I start with a ball of yarn and then roll it to a child while holding on to my end. That child then holds his end and rolls it to another child and so on and so on. When everyone is holding part of the yarn, you have a big spider web!

*There are two sheets we do with Miss Spider’s Tea party- Counting all Bugs and Miss Spider’s Guest from The Teacher’s Helper Sep/Oct 1996.

We do a LEA class story on spiders

Letter Recognition:

1. Letter Charts-Ww for web and Zz for the sound a fly makes. (Spiders eat flies..sometimes I have to stretch to integrate!)

2. Picture and Words-I have a large Spider we label. We also label body parts and the lifecycle of a spider. I like the children to come up with vocabulary we have learned such as arachnid, oviparous, abdomen, etc.

3. I also start doing a lot with word families now. It not only allows them to learn new words, but helps with beginning sounds. I usually start with -at, because Little Miss Muffet sat.....and it for the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Journal:

I have the students write about spiders all week. We make the thumbprints in our journals one day and glue the sequence cards of the lifecycle of a spider in our journals too to write about.

Spider Poems and Songs

The Spider Poem
Spiders are not insects
Spiders have eight legs
Spiders have four pair of eyes
Spiders hatch from eggs

Spider webs are sticky
Spiders weave them tight
Spiders spin that silky string
Spiders weave webs right!

Silly Itsy Bitsy Spider


The itsy bitsy spider
crawled upon ________’s head!
It crawled all around, then mad a nice soft bed
It wiggled down his/her shoulder
and jumped down to the floor.
Then the itsy bitsy spider
crawled to someone else for more!

I have eight legs
and sometimes eight eyes
I sit on a web
and wait for flies
What am I?

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