Spider Fun!

Aaaarrgghh, Spider! is a cute book about a spider that tries to convince his chosen family that he makes a great pet but just ends up frightening the family. Here is a fun book companion for after reading the story. We did a math survey: Do you think a spider will make a good pet? Then we made these fun spider headbands. I had the kids illustrate the characters and setting. 

We read many nonfiction books, including this one, to learn how spiders differ from insects, how they catch their food, what they eat, and where they live. We marked the marked the pages that we wanted to return to with a WOW sticky note. 

Here are two different  ways you can organize all your new learning after reading spider books. We made a circle map and a tree map. These learning maps help us write spider facts to add to the giant spider web. Gail Gibbons is my very favorite author for any nonfiction unit study. 

Learning how spiders differ from insects and labeling the body parts. 

You can find a print and go version of the circle map in my spider unit!

Check out the whole spider unit here!

spiders

Fall fun

October is flying by and we have been busy. We wrapped up our study on spiders and scarecrows. Lots of great learning going on here. I just love October!

We made a picture graph- Are you afraid of spiders? Then they analyzed the data on their own recording sheet.

 We learned how to make a graph with this anchor chart. Anchor chart inspired by Kim Adsit.

We labeled the parts of a spider. The kids drew their own spider in their science journal and practiced labeling the parts. Chart inspiration by Cara Carroll.

 Somewhere in October we learned about Christopher Columbus.

 We read The Little Scarecrow Boy and followed up with this craft by Julie Lee. They had to decide what kind of face they wanted their little scarecrow boy to have.

We read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We retold and acted out the story using these fun story props. Then we learned all about onomatopoeia.

 We've also been having some spooky fun. We read this emergent reader. I passed out witch fingers for the kids to tract print. We used the reading strategy fly eye to help us decode tricky words. You can find this book and the student version in my new spooky spooky unit.

 I put these and the play-doh mats in my morning tubs. I found all the erasers and bags at Target. My kids love it. All of these activities are found here.

 

 Be sure to check out these units on TPT.

spiders and a freebie

I have so many fun classroom activities to post on this blog and I'm way behind. So if you already taught your littles about spiders just tuck this away for next year.

 

Halloween this year was so fun we made witches brew and did some spooky science with dry ice. My kids loved it!

 

 We leaned the letter S and made a spider web with all our S words we found around the room. I gave each child a sentence strip and they had to find a S word in the classroom.

 

We labeled the parts of a spider with a little help from this song

 

I found this giant harry spider at Target

 

They drew a spider in their science journal and labeled it.

 

We made hand print spiders and wrote spider list poems using spider verbs and adjectives.

 

We read The Very Busy Spider and wrote text to self connections. It says, I am very busy  . . .  in kindergarten. I got this adorable idea from Cara over at the First Grade Parade.

We made a spider bubble map with all our new learning. The labels are from Deanna Jump's spider unit on TPT.

 

We graphed are you afraid of spiders and made our first pie graph. The recording sheet and spider coins can be found in my spider unit.

 

 

I love how Kim Adsit had her kids write the data with her on white boards so I gave it a try. We practiced making tally marks and the symbols for equal, greater than, and less than.

 

 

We have been practicing measuring with non standard measurement. He is something I had in one of my morning tubs.

 

 

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