S is for Spider

Fun week! I always like to change my themes, and it's fun to me to find different activities and teaching ideas for the new themes. I had never taught a unit only on spiders before.

I am sorry about both classes getting out late! I try to stay on schedule, so I apologize!

For math we talked about position or direction words, like above, below, next to, under, etc... Then each student was given a spider ring and we moved the spider to different places in our classroom using these words.

 One of our art projects was to make a spider and web. We did marble painting, where you put a marble in paint, and then put it in a box with a paper. To paint, you move the box to roll the marble around. The students seemed to like it, and it's cool to see their concentration to do it. Anything we can do to get their brains working, right!

 Then after the webs dried we poked two holes in the paper and added plastic spider rings. I thought they looked cool!

 Today (Thursday) we played another math game. One student went outside the classroom and then another student hid the ring. When the "finder" returned, the hider had to give clues using position/direction words to help them find it, for example, "Next to a green book." Super fun. We didn't have time to do this with the afternoon class, but I think we will do it next week. It was fun and good practice.

 Spider crafts: Today we did Plan B and Plan C on my spider craft activities list. :) My plan A involved black paint, which, although it was marked washable, stained my hands very badly I discovered while setting it up, so I thought rather than anger all of you with black paint stained children, I quickly found another craft this morning. Proof that it's always good to have a back up plan!

And yes, I know all spiders have 8 legs, but lots of students' spiders didn't quite make it home with all 8 legs. They were all still cute!

This is just a sample of Morning Message. I write the students a letter and we read it at the beginning of class. Sometimes it just tells what we will do that day, other times there is an activity or task. I am working with the Pre-K class on recognizing specific letters in print, so we've been circling letters in a poem. They are getting really good at it!