Letter Ss is for: Spider

I originally had planned a snow unit for the letter S, but since we have been having ridiculously warm weather, it just seemed like we should wait and do the unit next winter instead. So spiders it was. Which did not appease Elaina. “You know Mom, spiders kinda…well…freak me out!”
Oh.
Ooops.
We did the normal letter of the week stuff:
Word Whammer,
Handwriting Worksheet from
Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Play-doh page with
Cookie Cutter.

She is loving these
Letter Hunt Worksheets from COAH. She used white pom poms to make it snow on the letter S’s.
Our main book this week was The Spider and The Fly, which has amazing illustrations. Most of our activities are centered around the book.
She did spider and fly counting with this is a cute
activity from
Making Learning Fun. Spider webs with a numbered spider on them. She placed the correct amount of flies on the webs.
She laced a spider too.
We played a Roll-and-Graph game with these
Spider Math Mats ,
Bug Counters set, and our photo cubes.


She did some spider and fly patterning.
We checked out a couple of books from the library on spiders. I love her face here! She is trying not to be
totally grossed out…
We made a KWL chart again: what she already
Knows, what she
Wants to learn, and what she has
Learned. I love her question she asked, “Are they nocturnal?” She remembered that from our raccoon study…
For a fun alphabet review, she played
Smack That Spider from
2Teaching Mommies.

We went over the spider life cycle. She was fascinated with how some spiders carry their babies on their back.

You can’t do a spider unit without reading
Anansi! We checked out several of them, but her favorite was
Anansi's Party Time. We read the book and listened on CD as well.
In the story, Anansi had to hold onto Crab to be able to go to Turtles party under water (spiders float). So we did a sink/float activity.

She dropped various items into the water and predicted weather or not the item would float. I gave her the option to write or draw, and she choose to draw the object on the correct side of her chart.
Here she is drawing the alligator.

She asked to make a spider craft. Circle head and body, eight accordion folded legs, and a bunch of googly eyes.
I asked her if she wanted me to hang it up for her, and she said, “No thanks. That would totally creep me out!”
She did some letter tile spelling with the
cards from our
Very Busy Spider Pack. I made her this one last year, and she has used it many times.

Just For Fun
Elaina got a new bike this week. A cute pink Disney Princess bike.
Honestly, she is having some trouble learning how to peddle it, but she is one determined little girl, and even though I have found her kicking her bike and calling it “stupid”, she hops back on and keeps trying. I love this picture of Isaac encouraging her.