Monday 22 October 2012

Halloween: the scuttlers

http://thetigerchronicle.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Halloween

With Halloween approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to try to get into the mood of things by studying something related to the festival.  So, for nature study we have just learned all about spiders.  The link to Halloween?  Well, they often associate with witches' brew and spider webs are linked to creepy old houses, right?


Anyhow, autumn is a great time to study spiders.  They, or their webs, seem to appear everywhere, especially indoors as the weather gets colder outdoors.




To our great "joy", we didn't have much problems finding one big house spider living in the crevis of the bathroom wall.


Luckily almost all spiders in the UK are harmless to humans so we were able to enjoy looking at them without feeling too threatened.  It also helps to learn more about them here.  The house spider that we observed has spun a nice web that Tiger has replicated in the lounge using yarn:


We were lucky enough to find an obliging, sizeable house spider that made its way to the kitchen, so we scooped it up and observed it for about 10 minutes before letting it go.  The details on its body are astonishing!



The next most common spider in the UK is the garden spider, which spins the iconic orb web that everyone identifies as a 'typical' spider web.  We were able to observe one spinning its web just outside the patio door.



Tiger didn't feel like drawing spiders or their webs, so we concluded our spider study by reading a related Greek myth:


He did, however, spend the rest of the week making an increasingly elaborate web in the lounge....


Someone's got to make an entry in the nature journal, right?  That someone is me, ever the conscientious, rule-abiding student:


Drawing the spiders made me look really hard at them, and realised that their legs are really interesting, in that there are several joints to each.   The orb web took a long time to complete too.  Spiders are not the most attractive creatures that exist, but they are certainly fascinating under close observation.


This post is linked up to:
1)  All Year Round Blog Carnival: Autumn
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/23/12
3) Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop #36
4) Homeschool Mother's Journal: October 26, 2012
5) Collage Friday
6) Favourite Resources: October 26, 2012
7) TGIF Linky Party #53
8) It's a Wrap
9) Weekly Wrap-Up
10) Science Sunday

5 comments:

  1. Love the creative rope spider web your son built. Just recently we found the biggest spider in our UK home. When I tried to catch it it ran straight towards me, scared the heck of of me:) I know they are harmless and good the for the environment but I don't like them getting too close so I am afraid that particular spider had a short lifespan:)

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  2. We have a spider making kit from the national geographic. It would be very easy to make- just six pieces of wood sticks joined together to make a hexagon and you leave it somewhere where there might be spiders (pretty much every where in my house!) and over night you get a lovely big spider web!

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  3. What a great spider study! Thanks for sharing at Favorite Resources.

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  4. I love that you included the greek mythology! What a great idea.
    Thanks for linking up to Science Sunday!

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  5. What a fantastic unit study on spiders! It looks like everyone had a great time learning. Spiders personally creep me out a little bit but after putting togeter a trantula lapbook last Spring for my son I can appreciate the spider species a little more. Thanks for linking up this week to my Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop!

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