Silent Sunday this week showed you a beautiful picture of a spider , well not all of you found the little creature beautiful and aracnophobia (a fear of spiders) is not uncommon. But I thought I would give you a little more information about spiders so you can decide for yourself if they are creepy or in fact very clever!
Plus I will attach a worksheet for you to print off so you can make you own spider and next week will add on how to make the web!
- Spiders are known as a group of animals called arachnids! Arachnids have 2 body parts and eight legs, so are not insects
- Spiders are predators which means they hunt living prey
- Spiders will eat other spiders
- Spiders can be dated back 2 million years!
- Spiders have fangs – almost all spiders have venom in them!
- Only a few spiders have venom strong enough to cause serious pain to a human like the Black Widow
- All spiders produce silk
- Not all spiders make webs
- Silk is used to build webs, smooth burrow walls (yes spider’s like to decorate!), build egg sacs and wrap their prey!
- When spider’s hang on their silk like a rope it is called a ‘dragline’
- Some large spiders will trap and eat birds, bats, mice, fish and even snakes!
- Spiders live on liquid lunches! They cannot chew or swallow, so they inject their prey with venom which turns their insides into goo which they then such up (without the straw!)
Now how do fancy making your very own little moving part spider?
You will need:
Card
Black pens
Black pipe cleaners
Hole punch
Split pins
Googly eyes
The worksheet can be found here to print! Making a spider!
amanatal
July 7, 2011 at 4:32 pmThere is one more relevant fact that spider silk had more tensile strength than steel cables.
sciencesparks
July 7, 2011 at 9:28 pmOooh yes, your right…don’t fisherman sometimes use it because of it’s strength? Thanks for pointing that out! 🙂
Ross Mannell
July 7, 2011 at 9:55 pmWonderful blog post and a great idea for the children to make a spider. I may use it with holiday care group children I help mind at the moment. The littlies in the group will love the idea.
sciencesparks
July 15, 2011 at 5:13 pmLet us know how they get on!
Helen R
July 10, 2011 at 6:58 amThis is super. Another toddler-at-home-day idea – thanks!
sciencesparks
July 15, 2011 at 5:14 pmYea! so glad you liked it!
susankmann
July 14, 2011 at 4:37 pmWhat a great post. I am going to give this a go. Thanks x
sciencesparks
July 15, 2011 at 5:11 pmLet us know how you get on!