We caught a spider today and observed it more closely with a magnifying glass. It spurred a discussion about spiders with my boys. Here are some of the kid-friendly discussion points that we talked about;
- Spiders are arachnids, not insects.
- Other members of the arachnid family include scorpions, mites, ticks and harvestmen.
- Spiders have 8 legs while insects have 6.
- Spiders don’t have antennae while insects do.
- Most spiders make silk which they use to create spider webs and capture prey.
You can find the above facts and more on spiders here.
To take it a step further, I showed my children a video of how spiders spin their web. They were in awe. So was I. I had no idea that spiders followed such a clearly defined step-by-step geometric process when spinning their web. Here’s a video that shows the individual steps of web spinning in English and in French.
And if your kids are old enough, wrap up your spider lesson with a Spider Man movie.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a scientist. I am not a teacher. I am a resourceful Mom with a science background who is passionate about teaching sciences to her kids. Although this blog does its best to use scientifically accurate terms and concepts, the main focus is to initiate a curiosity and an interest about sciences in children. Therefore, concepts and terms may be greatly simplified and/or only discussed in part.
Comments on: "Spider and web information for kids" (2)
Its good to know that kids are being taught science at home through lessons like this one. Great work!
Thanks Dan. It’s a lot of fun, and boy am I learning stuff too!