Skip to main content

Spiders Unit Study - For Late Elementary or Middle School


Since we had only been in school for one week when the Labor Day holiday happened, we decided to go ahead and have a school day. But I wanted to make it a little more fun than a normal day, and nature gave us a perfect unit to study.


This has been a crazy year for spiders around here. The exterior of our house looks like an abandoned house with all of the spider webs. I don't know what the deal is this summer, but we have had some really cool observations despite the annoyance of them. (I guess they have kept the bugs at bay, so that's also a positive.)

It was a little challenging to find a unit study about spiders that was not designed for preschoolers, but with some searching and pinning I came up with something to educate and entertain the kids on this holiday away from traditional school.

Language Arts


Prefixes/Suffixes - I put the prefixes dis- and in- and the suffixes -ed and -ing on paper plates. The kids came up with eight words for each and wrote them on spider legs. Then we attached them to our plates to make spiders. When they ran out of their own ideas they used my grandma's old dictionary and an internet search to find more words. (I wanted them to know how to search each way.)


"The Spider and the Fly" - we read the poem and (1) identified all of the adjectives used by the spider to describe his home in human terms; (2) wrote down all of the forms of flattery the spider used to entice the fly; and (3) came up with the moral of the poem. (You can download all of these materials for free HERE.)


Math


It was time for a snack so we did some geometry and made spider toast.


Since we are regularly studying fractions, I did a search and found a fun spider Half Fractions Coloring Picture that required the kids to determine if 27 different fractions were more than a half, less than a half, or the same as half. Once the calculations were made they used those answers to color picture of a spider. (I don't normally purchase downloadable materials, but this fit perfectly with our theme and was challenging and worth the $2.00).


Lunch


For lunch I made Brynne pepperoni and cracker spiders and Eli peanut butter crackers. Both sets had pretzel legs.


Science


We learned about the parts of a spider and the life cycle of a spider.

A simple look through a bunch of straws demonstrated how difficult it is for a spider to see.



We did two experiments. One to determine why spiders don't stick to their own sticky webs.


The other one demonstrated what happens when a spider's venom enters the body of an insect.



We learned about the different types of webs (found in "The Spider and the Fly" download), and observed specimens of them right outside our front door.

We have orb webs. One night a couple of weeks ago when we lost power, we had the opportunity to watch an orb spider up close and personal. Dawson tossed her a live June Bug and we watched the entire process of her sensing it, running to it, stunning it, spinning it, moving it for a later meal, and fixing its web. Dawson got it in slow motion video and it was crazy fascinating to watch.




Sheet webs


Tangled webs. The tangled web located on our air conditioner, and right up against the window, had three egg sacks with one that has recently hatched and we have seen lots and lots and lots of babies.



and Horizontal Thread webs (we didn't find any live examples).

Music


We listened to Kristen Lawrence's "Arachnitect" on Youtube which is a musical version of a spider luring in its prey to the web.


Charlotte's Web


Of course we ended our day with some popcorn and a viewing of Charlotte's Web.



Comments

  1. I love all these ideas! I don't homeschool, but we still do a lot of learning activities at home. Thank you for sharing! XOXO

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

We all know that in this crazy world of homeschooling, we need all the (adult) support we can get. Please leave a comment if you so wish!

Popular posts from this blog

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

A Thomas Jefferson Education "This Week in History" ~ Schoolhouse Review

Talk about a GOLD MINE! A Thomas Jefferson Education's This Week in History by Rachel DeMille is her "labor of love" ... and I absolutely LOVE it! " This Week in History is a daily resource that brings your home school or classroom to life." For just $9.99 per month, you can log onto TJEd.com and click the "This Week in History" link to obtain many, many, many resources tied to specific events that occurred in the upcoming week in history. Or even better, you can receive the summaries and links to ALL resources right in your email Inbox each week! It doesn't get any easier than that! What does this really look like in real life? Each week, I receive an email from Rachel DeMille that sets out each date of the coming week. Under the date, there are listed anywhere from one to several events that occurred in history on that date. THEN there are ALL kinds of things to do related to that event, such as books to read, websites to visit, ac

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.