Unit Ten A fall unit study Ages 4–7
Spiders
$5.99 · One-time purchase
We build a web of yarn between four chairs, sit the child at the centre with one hand on a thread and their eyes closed, and drop a paper fly somewhere on the far side — then find out how she knows. The week ends with chocolate web pretzels.
Page two
The four books
Read aloud, more than once, in no particular order. Each one is annotated — why it is here and what to watch for. If one of the four is out at the library, four is not the point.
- The Very Busy Spider — Eric Carle
- Spiders — Gail Gibbons
- A House Spider’s Life — John Himmelman
- Anansi the Spider — Gerald McDermott
The books are not included and they are not for sale here. They are library books, which is the point.
Page four
The science lesson
A spider is not an insect: eight legs and two body parts joined in the middle, against an insect’s six and three. The orb-weaver lays her spokes first and adds the sticky spiral afterwards. Her eyes are poor and she does not need them — she reads the web with her legs.
It opens with what the parent needs to know, written for someone who has not thought about it since school. Then a demonstration to do at the table, and one question afterward.
“How does a spider know something has landed in her web?”
Ask it once. Then be quiet and let the answer come, however long it takes.
And then the rest of it.
- The poems
- “The Spider and the Fly” — Mary Howitt, said aloud once a day until it is theirs by Friday. Then “A Noiseless Patient Spider” — Walt Whitman, read once on the last day and deliberately not explained.
- The activity
- Build a web of yarn between four chairs, big enough to sit inside. The child sits at the centre as the spider, eyes closed, one hand on a thread, while a paper fly is dropped somewhere on the far side.
- The craft
- A chalk web on black paper — long spokes first, all meeting at one point, then the spiral round and round from the middle out. Flick water on with a brush for dew, and count the legs out loud while drawing the spider.
- Math
- Counting, number bonds to ten, tally marks, which pile has more, and word problems to read aloud — all of it about spiders.
- The copywork page
- “The spider spins a silver web.” on three-line ruling — two lines traced, the rest left blank.
- A devotion, five days
- 5 days, two minutes each at the table — a verse, a sentence, and one line to pray together. New King James Version. Proverbs 30:28 · Psalm 139:14 · Ecclesiastes 4:9 · Colossians 3:23 · Psalm 104:24.
- Chocolate web pretzels
- Makes eight. Twenty-five minutes of work and an hour of waiting. The child’s job and the adult’s job are written out separately, so nobody has to guess who holds the knife.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, a ball of yarn, four chairs and a doorway you can spare for an hour, black paper, white chalk, and a printer.
Take the spiders unit.
One purchase for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login — it arrives by email, and it is yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
Here it is.
All five days of Apples, yours to print. A copy is on its way to your inbox as well — check the spam folder if it isn’t there in a few minutes.
Start with Monday: cut an apple across the middle instead of down through the stem, and look for the star.