Spider Unit

We had a lot of fun over the last couple of weeks learning all about spiders.  I was hoping that once I learned more about spiders I wouldn’t be quite so scared of them.  But that didn’t happen.  They were still very interesting to learn about though, and I am still amazed at how much I learn now that I am homeschooling.

Here are just SOME of the things we did- there was just way too much to share everything!

Of course, we had to have a real spider to observe.  I tried not to look at it very often 😉

We learned how spiders eat their prey by injecting venom into it, which turns the insect into liquid and then the spider drinks the food.  We put our prey (a sugar cube) in a cup.  Then we injected it with venom (water) and drank our prey.

We also made these cute Spider Glyphs, which you can see here.

We played a fun game where we threw little plastic spiders onto this spider web I made on the floor and added up our scores.

We did a little experiment to learn why spiders don’t stick to their webs.  First Hailey put her fingers on a piece of masking tape and her fingers stuck to it.  Then she dipped her fingers in vegetable oil and tried it again, and her fingers did not stick.  Spiders make an oil that makes it so they do not stick to their webs.

  We read about the spider life cycle and then Hailey made this Life Cycle poster.

We sang a little spider song.  We sang it to the tune of 10 little Indians:
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl around your web.
We used different words in place of crawl like pounce, jump, etc.

If you click on the picture above, you can see some of the other fun things we did with spiders- made hats and some different fun snacks.

We made a Spider Schema chart.

Hailey matched up spider vocabulary words with their definitions.

Hunter and Hailey made an All About Spiders book.

Hailey observed our classroom spider and wrote down her observations.

We ended our unit with a Spider Report.  Hailey picked an interesting spider (she picked the tarantula) and wrote a report about them.  They really are very interesting, but if I ever saw one in person I don’t think I could handle it.

Many of the printables we used came from The Razzle Dazzle Classroom or A Day in First Grade.

We also watched these videos about spiders:

and

It was a fun and interesting unit, but I am glad I won’t have to look at anymore spiders for a while!

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Tot School

Hunter is 23 months old

We had another fun week at Tot School!

We are learning all about spiders and we even caught a spider to observe.  Hunter really liked watching the spider!

Color sorting with M&Ms onto different colored spiders.

I asked Hunter, “Where is the blue one?” and he pointed in his mouth because he had just eaten a blue M&M 🙂

Hunter loved searching through rice for some plastic spiders.

We sang a little spider song.  We sang it to the tune of 10 little Indians:
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl, crawl, crawl like a spider.
Crawl around your web.
We used different words in place of crawl like pounce, jump, etc.

You can see some of the other spider fun we had by clicking on the picture above.

Hunter enjoyed some sensory bags this week- this one had shaving cream in it.

He also played with a sensory bag with shampoo in it.

E was our letter this week- we were making an elephant and didn’t have any gray paper, so Hunter colored the paper.

Making the E craft

E is for Elephant

Hunter played with his letter magnets and sang the ABCs

We added the letter E to our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree.

We have been learning about Thanksgiving and this week we learned about the Sioux Indians and made tee-pees.  Hunter worked a long time coloring his tee-pee.

Hailey and Hunter’s finished tee-pees.

Hunter likes to do whatever Hailey is doing, so he worked on coloring a picture just like she was doing.

Stop by 1+1+1=1 to see what the other tots were up to this week.

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Bee Crafty Kids- Fun With Spiders

Welcome back to the Bee Crafty Kids link up that I am co-hosting with To The Moon and Back and Look! We’re Learning.

We are doing a fun unit about spiders right now.  I am loving learning all about spiders, but I am pretty sure that I will always be very terrified of them.

Here are some of the fun activities we did this week with our spider unit:

We used Oreo cookies, Twizzlers (the ones that you can peel), frosting and M&Ms to make a little spider snack.

Here is Hailey’s completed spider.

Hailey and Hunter made these cute spider hats.  Hunter wasn’t a fan of his and said, “NO spider!”  He was willing to pose for a picture, but he refused to wear it after that.

Then we made another spider snack- these did not turn out exactly like I thought they would hahahaha… we used a donut, pretzels, frosting and M&Ms.

Here is Hailey’s spider

Ummmm… and Hunter’s spider

This was mine, a bit more of what I had in mind.  But, when Hailey and Hunter pushed the legs (pretzels) into the body (donut) they didn’t do it very gently, so the donuts pretty much crumbled.  They were yummy anyway 🙂

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Now it’s your turn! Link up and share what you and your kids have been busy making. Grab a button so others can join in the crafting fun too 🙂

<div align="center"><a href="http://ourcraftsnthings.com/" title="Our Crafts N Things"><img src="http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q594/dustybug83/BeeCraftyKids3_zps44074ad6.png" alt="Our Crafts N Things" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Rules are simple:

~Enter the direct link to one or more of your own posts that showcase a craft or hands on activity for children.

~A link back with the above button is appreciated, but not required

~Try to at least comment on one or two of the other blogs that took the time to share and join!
Here’s this week’s code for the link up:

Heart of Dakota- BLHFHG Unit 7

I am trying to catch up on my posts, so I am doing another post this week about what we have been doing in school.  I get too confused and can’t remember what we did which week when I get behind!  So, here is a summary of what we did last week:

History:

This week we learned that the Pilgrims decided to leave Holland and head to America.  They would have to leave all of their friends and would not be able to bring very much with them.

I saw this cute idea at The First Grade Parade.  Hailey had to pretend she could only bring one suitcase with her and decide what she would bring.  I thought her answers were cute.

Language Arts:

While reading our adventure book we created this staircase.  Each step has a problem that happened during the story written on it.  As the problem was solved Hailey colored that step.

Math:

In math Hailey is learning to add with double digits.  She practiced by using pennies and ones and dimes for tens.

Unit Study:

We finished up learning about bats this week (several of the activities we did came from Batty for Bats and Stellaluna), and the started a unit about spiders.

We learned how a mother bat uses her sense of smell to find her baby bat.  I dipped cotton balls into different things like vinegar, vanilla, coffee and perfume.  I let Hailey pick a “baby” and then I blindfolded her and had her find her “baby” using her sense of smell.

Hailey made this project as part of the super fun Stellaluna unit we did.

The inside.

Hailey wrote an acrostic poem about bats.

Hailey just started a spider unit and this was our first experiment.  We learned how spiders eat their prey by injecting venom into it, which turns the insect into liquid and then the spider drinks the food.  We put our prey (a sugar cube) in a cup.  Then we injected it with venom (water) and drank our prey.

It was a really fun week!!

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities