Saturday, October 1, 2011

Spider Babies and Amazing Arachnids Adventures

Spiders are not insects they are Arachnids

Movies we watched
Magic school bus Creepy Crawly
Charlotte's web
Jeff Corwin experience Arachnids and Insects
Show me science, biology: mini works of insects and spiders.
This was a great movie really kept my younger ones interest but provided enough facts to satisfy my 10 year old. Their favorite part was when a caterpillar made his home out of super sticky poop blocks. Eeeewwww! The suggested age on this was grade 4-8 but I think it is better suited for K-4

Our favorite spider books:
Diary of a spider
Miss spiders Tea Party

Our spider egg


We used medical gauze to paper mache a balloon after it hardened (5 days) we glued and hung freshly hatching baby spiders from it. (we used assorted Halloween rings and toy spiders)

We went on a hunt for house spiders I was shocked that we did not find any. We did find some old dusty abandoned spider webs on the rafters in the basement. Later that night I was cleaning up the toys in the playroom when my husband said with urgency
"Go upstairs right now and take the kids." He later told me that a 2-3 inch spider ran right in front of me. He was able to find it and smash it. I usually let the small house spiders live but a big hairy one NOWAY! Luckily the kids never saw that big one or I believe that they wouldn't have hung out in the playroom for a long time.

We went on a few nature walks searching for webs and just as I was about to give up I found a really neat one right next to my window on the side of the house. I misted it with some water to get a better picture of it just as my neighbor came out and wonder what the heck I was doing. After we laughed, he took me 1 more house down to see a spider he said he has been watching all week on the other side of his house.

Spider web next to my window.


The spider our neighbors showed us just two houses down from ours.

We made spider webs and put spider stickers on them.


We we also lucky enough to find a prefectly in tact dead house spider hanging on my dads front door. Being a homeschooler we of course took it home to examine under magnifying glasses. It was very cool you could see its compounds eyes and hairs on its legs.

Spider fact: in the fall spiders are not trying to get into your house so they can stay warm. They are in fact looking for a mate. Fall is mating season for spiders. The males are running around everywhere in search of females, and the females are busy makes beautiful webs. That is why its seems like spiders are more abundant in the fall. lots of males are just out looking for females.

5 comments:

~Holly said...

We are doing spiders too! I'll have to check out the videos.

~Holly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

We've studied spiders before. Would you believe that a Mama spider stuck her egg sac to my shower curtain and my kids wouldn't let me dispose of it? LOL Every day they would check on it and then one day it was deflated...but we never found out where all those itty bitty babies went! (Or if there were even any IN it.) My kids favorite spider activity: taking yarn and "spinning" a spider web in their bedrooms. (Took a long time to remove! LOL)

Mama Bird said...

Oh , wow I dont know if I could have left the spider sack there! Good for you for leaving it be i may have disposed of it then told my kids it must have fallen down (blush)Spinning a sider web in a room would be fun maybe we will still try that!

Lisa @ Our Country Road said...

I love your spider egg sac. I found the only time I liked having TONS of spiders in our house is during our spider lesson. I dont know why but there are so many out here!