Spiders Week 1

Hello everyone. As I write this it is a stunningly beautiful autumn afternoon. I hope that you are all out enjoying it in some way.

We had a very fun week focusing on spiders. We have done plenty of searching for spiders and webs, and our searches have been very fruitful because spiders are everywhere! We’ve seen sheet webs and spiral orb webs and even at least one funnel web. We took spray bottles out to help us find and examine webs both at the park and in the play yard. We found both full and empty spider egg sacs and saw some being watched over by the parent spider. It was interesting to observe the empty egg sac. It was so soft it felt like silky fur, but at the same time strong enough to hold up to being touched by the entire class. We looked at some photographs of spiders and egg sacs and their babies, and we all played being baby spiders hatching out of the egg sac again and again. We have a couple of web building games and activities in the play yard. Spiders are so interesting and so easy to observe and they offer us a great opportunity to explore kinship with and compassion for things that may make us uncomfortable. We will continue spiders next week as well. 

Just this morning we witnessed a portly raccoon making its way down through the branches right on the side of our play yard. We heard the geese passing overhead. We've noticed the leaves suddenly bursting into color everywhere. We see and hear juncos, hummingbirds, crows, chickadees, nuthatches. It's good to be outside.