"Webby" fun for little ones!

We began our letter "W" unit study last week as we gathered around the table on Friday afternoon.  Each week as we wrap up our previous week of learning, I will introduce the letter for the next week and we will begin discussing ideas of things we might like to study around that letter.  Sometimes, we want to study things that have NOTHING to do with the letter.  That's perfectly fine and usually I can craft the letter to fit into the lesson SOMEHOW :))! 

So, as we began discussing all the things that start with a "W", it was an unanimous decision when I mentioned spiders and their webs.  We ARE in October and the children have been seeing all kinds of fun things in the stores while shopping with parents, so WEBS it is! 

We began our circle time this morning talking about the letter "W", it's sound and words that begin with "W."  Our sweet little Alice exclaimed, "MS. DONNA!  WHEN are you going to talk about WEBS!"  I was saving that for the last word, but she beat me to it...little genious!  I unraveled all the spider webbing I bought at the store, neon green (SO CUTE!)  and began to stretch it and cut it, giving each child a portion of the webbing and asking them to stretch it, squish it and see just how far they could spread it out.  I asked them to feel each strand and imagine that they were little spiders walking on each tiny thread.  We all thought it would be quite a challenge to balance on such a smallish strand, but then again, as one child observed, "spiders do have itty, bitty legs!"  True!  I also began passing out black paper, glue and these purple and pink spider legs.  We counted out loud how many legs each spider has...one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!  They squealed with excitment as I also pulled out the cotton balls and demonstrated my idea about how we could make a little spider to climb on our neon green spider webbing.

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We finished up our lttle spider friends with lots of googly eyes.  The children LOVE anything we can glue googly eyes to!  We discussed that spiders have eyes that can see in every direction to help them find their food and we pretended to be able to see in every direction too.  The children already believe that I can do this :))  (really, what momma can't??!!)

The finished product :)
We placed our spiders onto our webbing to allow everything a while to dry while singing "Itsy, Bitsy Spider" as we worked :)).  Sigh...such a fun time of year!!!

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We also read this new book several times.  Each child took his/her turn "being spider."  They would stick their little fingers inside and practice wiggling up and down, in and out.  I just bought this one at Barnes and Noble last night and I think we already got our $6.99 out of it!

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