Kids Love Creepy Crawlies!
What is it about kids and creepy crawly critters?? They love them! To us (or me anyway!), they’re creepy; they’re crawly; and they’re cringe worthy. But somehow, when they come in the form of clipart and lapbooks, they are down right adorable! Who doesn’t love a good construction paper spider with accordion legs?! Here are some great spider books and activities to do with your students during you ELA block.
Diary of a Spider
To kick things off, Doreen Cronin’s Diary of a Spider is a great one! It’s a light hearted and fun introduction to a fictional spider’s world. Don’t miss the rich vocabulary and great humor found in all the illustrations. The humor in all the details of this book gets me every time! Reading all the extras aloud is definitely a must in this one! Our favorite is a newspaper illustration of The Compost Times featuring an article titled “Spiders and Flies Rumble in the City.” Diary of a Spider is also great for discussing personal pronouns and point of view. After reviewing personal pronouns and teaching your students how they relate to point of view, you can have them practice maintaining first person point of view using the proper pronouns in a diary of their own.
Sophie’s Masterpiece
Sophie’s Masterpiece by Eileen Spinelli is a beautifully written story that will have you rethinking all those times you’ve run at the spider with a shoe (or can of hairspray if you’re like me!). The illustrations are just as beautiful as Eileen Spinelli’s story telling.
Sophie is a spider who just wants to help others with her beautifully spun masterpieces, but no one seems to appreciate her hard work and thoughtful gestures. Sophie’s Masterpiece would be a great springboard for a discussion on perspective and how a person’s perspective can be tied to their experiences. This is also a great mentor text for practicing finding and supporting theme.
A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider
Most students are familiar with E.B. White’s classic novel, Charlotte’s Web. Of course, Charlotte’s Web itself makes for a great read aloud during a study of spiders if your students aren’t already familiar with it (or even if they are!). A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider: The Story of E.B. White by Barbara Herkert, is a wonderful mentor text. A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider is written in poetry and has a rich vocabulary, and the illustrations, by Lauren Castillo, are beautiful.
The story follows E.B. White from childhood, through college, and into adulthood. Children will learn about the role writing played for E.B. White and where he found his inspiration for his classic novels Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. There are so many teaching possibilities with this text. Students can keep their own journal (a great tie to Diary of a Spider); study and write their own poetry; and compare and contrast the book with a more traditional biography article on E.B. White. This would also be a great book to use for studying how masterful authors use commas.
Spider Folklore, Mythology, Legends, and Traditional Tales
Spiders can be found in a wide variety of folklore, mythology, legends, and traditional stories. Gerald McDermott’s Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti tells the story of Anansi, a folk hero to the people of Ghana. The prologue of the book does a great job introducing the story itself and where it originated. Pairing this with the story of Arachne and Minerva (or Arachne and Athena) is great because students love mythology- at least ours do! Just think about all the Percy Jackson fans in your classroom! We have yet to find a picture book we love that solely tells the story of Arachne and Minerva, but Gail Gibson’s Spiders has a couple pages that talks about the story. You could also share Native American legends with your students. Spider Spins a Story edited by Jill Max includes 14 different legends. Comparing and contrasting any of these tales and legends would be a great ELA activity.
Spider Lapbooks
To accompany your spider related mentor texts, we love having students do their own research on spiders. Lapbooks are a great way to keep students’ research contained and in one place, and this spider lapbook is the cutest thing we’ve seen in a while! Who doesn’t love a cute craftivity that is rooted in good academic learning?! With this research project we included suggested websites that are kid friendly and still have good information on spiders, but we recommend not giving your kids too much scaffolding their research. Of course in October, it is still early in the year and kids will still need a little guidance, but let them do some investigating on their own too. It is important for them to learn digital responsibility and how to use the internet for academic purposes. I like to do a quick review of what credible websites generally look like and have before turning the kids completely loose to research.
Non-Fiction Spider Picture Books
It is also great to have non-fiction spider books displayed and available during your spider study or along side your spider picture books. Time for Kids and National Geographic kids have some really good ones with fantastic photographs!
