A WEB WOVEN FROM KINDNESS

For this group activity we start by explaining we are going to build our own 'blue room spider web'. The children are always interested right from the get go. I grab the spool of blue yarn and let them know that they can only pass on the yarn to someone by calling their name and then they have to give them a compliment (we explain that this is saying something nice about someone). I start off by picking someone that may be having a rough day or I just feel could use the first pick me up. Every year the compliments are different, some years it's all mostly "I like your shirt or shoes" type comments and some years, like this one, the kids are a little more open to exposing themselves and dig a little deeper. It was a wonderful thing to hear them passing the yarn and calling out a friends name and telling them they love them. This definitely needs my help to facilitate, I take the yarn through the middle to the next person receiving both the compliment and the next part of the web, and it usually requires me to constantly reminders children to hold their part of the yarn still and don't pull it or they will break the web. I've had a great amount of luck with this activity every year though. The kids get another tie in to our arachnid theme but more importantly they all see the value in their kindness.

This picture is so not website worthy but hey, it's late. And that's the only one I have. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit :-)

IT WAS A STICKY SCIENTIFIC SPIDERY SENSORY SENSATION

Image via Wikipedia

I'm not sure where I learned this from. I'm  thinking  it may have been someone at my previous school that showed me this cool lesson.
Anyways we did the experiment again today just like we do every year when we are studying arachnids, and just like every other year it was a huge success. The children love it and it is a hands on way to teach them something
 about spiders. I found this description of the lesson here at Scholastic Teacher :

Sticky Web Science focus: Survival strategies What to do: Spiders use their webs to catch prey. But how do spiders crawl across their webs and not get caught themselves? They have a special oil on their legs. Here's an easy way to show students how this works. Place a piece of contact paper sticky side up on the table. Now, use yarn to create a spider web. Tell the kids to pretend their fingers are spider legs and to try to "walk" across the web. They will stick to it. Next, have students dip their fingers in vegetable oil and do the same experiment-and they will see how much easier it is!

This is basically the same as our experiment except we just used a piece of the stickiest tape (packaging tape) and first let the children feel how sticky it was then we used a small amount of baby oil in a bowl and they took turns feeling the 'sticky web' after having oil on their fingers. They were amazed at how their fingers  were able to just glide over the once tacky tape.