A week on Spiders! Eeeek! (And Frankenstein)

To start off our October, we're learning about spiders!  Our letter this week will be "E" as in "Eeeek!" (for when some of us spot a spider).


Craft Stick Webs - The kiddos became spiders today.  They wrapped their spider silk around and around creating a web to catch critter in.

I had some plastic ants that we wrapped into the webs.  Add a cute spider (I made ours from felt scraps).

For my younger kiddos, I glued a spider ring on their web and then had them wrap.

Science - Spider Eyes - Today we chatted about the various number of eyes that spiders have.  We talked about why they might need that many...
"So they can see so many things!  Trees, plants, us..."
We also chatted about what spiders eat (insects) and how that makes them helpers to people.  Just imagine all the bugs we'd have all over if we didn't have spiders to eat them!

So we decided to give ourselves a few more eyes.  We made headbands!

Tp Frankenstein - The older kiddos cut the tops of the tp rolls to make hair (that was some good cutting practice) then they painted their monsters.  The younger kiddos I made the cuts for them and pre-painted the hair.

I tried a few different methods of decoration.  My three year olds drew their faces on with a Sharpie.  Cute, but I think gluing googly eyes on would have helped.

Next was my 2 year old class.  I let them choose out eyes and buttons and I glued them where they directed with my glue gun.  They LOVED sifting through the eyes and buttons.  I drew a simple smile on for them.

For my 4 year old class, we kinda did a combination of the two.  The kiddos got to choose.

Bone Wreaths - On Monday the kiddos helped me paint some pasta white (put pasta in a large ziploc with a few squirts of paint and shook it).  On Wednesday we glued all those "bones" onto a wreath.  Lots of glue.  Once they dried I brushed them with Modge Podge, with the hopes that they would stay together.  On Friday we decorated our wreaths!

Here are a few of the completed wreaths...

Spider Rings - You've got to have a plethora of spider rings when learning about spiders!

Science - Insect Wrapping - I asked the kiddos how spiders catch their food and eat it.  They knew that they catch them in their web and wrap them up.  What they didn't know was that spiders bite their meal, injecting it with poison that turns their innards into mushy goo.  They let them hang in their web for a while, then suck up the innards.  Aren't we glad we don't eat that way.  Yowza