What better way to start a new year off than to travel to Australia? The students were greeted with a huge whale that took up half of my wall space and turtles swimming overhead. We were sure to find some excitement in the land down under!
We read about wombats, learned how the Aussie’s talk, sang some great Australian folk songs, made clap sticks, wrote postcards and danced sacred aboriginal dances.
Then we turned our attention to some creepy crawly eight-legged creatures….that’s right, SPIDERS! There was just a little bit of arachnophobia in the classroom as we learned about Huntsmen, Sydney Funnel Web, Red Back and other very scary Australian spiders. The most interesting thing about spiders is their webs…. or so we thought. Do you know there are many kinds of spiders that don’t spin webs?
The gladiator spider constructs a square net which it holds between its forelegs while hovering a few inches above the ground. When an unsuspecting insect wanders by it drops to the floor and captures its prey in the net! So cool!
every child's an artist 