SPIDERS!

October is a month of spiders at Literacy Launchpad. I've been doing my best to freak the kids out (in a preschooler-friendly, G-rated way) with these creepy crawlers. My favorite is my friend Harry that I bring along each week. He's a furry little fake spider, with a long tube attached to him, with a bulb at the end that you use to pump air through the tube that makes him jump and wiggle. I try to wear something that allows me to wind the tube through my sleeve and really freak them out when I make him move. But the first week in October I had on short sleeves and I still startled quite a few of my students. Then those very same students were startled the following week when Harry came back, even though they knew how he worked at that point. I love preschoolers! One little boy said, "It's a necklace! It's a necklace. It's a necklace... Right?" Hee.

We read The Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Roly Poly Spider to start off October. The Itsy Bitsy Spider lends itself well to some predicting practice. The kids like to see if they can guess what's going to send the spider flying. And The Roly Poly Spider is all kinds of fun, because it's kind of gross. So we have all kinds of fun ewwwing and ickking at each page turn. The kids all pointed out that this spider was "not a good friend." Indeed! Smart kids!

We reviewed and practiced the sequence of The Itsy Bitsy Spider with a fun activity in which we sent plastic spiders down a piece of a real water spout. This also helps connect this story to real life and make the story concept more concrete for the kids. Most of them ended up saying, "Oh! I have a water spout on my house too!" And then they could actually see just how a big gush of water might wash a spider out of a water spout.

At Home with The Itsy Bitsy Spider

My Little Reader loves the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Both the story and the song. His interest in the song is what initially prompted me to pull the book off the shelf for our first reading... way back whenever that was. Now he sings the song with all the verses from the book mixed in. The "up jumped the cat," one seems to be his favorite.

He's been singing the song a lot lately, which reminded me of this activity I learned from my favorite preschool teacher... Jeanne Bell (note: she was not my preschool teacher, she's a preschool teacher who I simply think is brilliant). When she does this activity with her students, she dresses up like Mother Goose and has this elaborate ruse she pulls off on the kids, which is hysterical. I have a video recoding of it somewhere. I should dig it up and put it online... She would kill me!

I'm not as awesome as Mrs. Bell, so I have never dressed up like Mother Goose. But I knew Isaac would have fun with this one even if Mother Goose didn't make an appearance.

So here are some photos of Isaac and I doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider activity. You'll need a copy of the book, some plastic spider rings (at least one for each of your children or students), a curved section of rain gutter (Home Depot or Lowes), and a plastic bin for catching the water (or a bathtub in our case here).

I suspect you can see where I'm going with this based on the supply list. Check out the photos for the rest.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain...

and washed...

the spider out.

Allow the spider to climb back up the waterspout as many times as you wish... or can tolerate. Make sure every student gets a turn washing the spider down the spout. And of course, let them keep their spider rings to remember the reading fun!

Guaranteed fun, and helps solidify this classic rhyme in their little heads. My students could play this activity all day long, and My Little Reader would have too if I would have allowed... But I got really tired of holding the rain gutter. Wish I could come up with a solution for that. Got any suggestions?

Let me know if you try this one out with your kiddos, and how everybody likes it!