And she made fork impressions by herself!
I wanted to have a picture of the final product but they disappeared rather quickly!
We studied our new spider friend.
Georgia looked in her Children's Guide to Insects & Spiders and identified what type of spider he is. He is a jumping spider from the family Salticidae.
Here's what we learned about the jumping spider...
These spiders are so named because of their jumping ability. They can jump many times their own length. They make quick, sudden jumps to capture prey or avoid a threat. They also can walk backward.
These common spiders are about 1/8 – 3/4 inches long, very hairy, stocky built, and short-legged. Two of their eight eyes are very large. They have the keenest vision of all spiders. Many species have patches of brightly colored or iridescent scales. Some are black with spots of orange or red on the upper surface of the abdomen, at times confused with black widow spiders.
Jumping spiders are active during the day and prefer sunshine. They normally live outdoors, but jumping spiders can become established indoors and their hunting activities often center about windows and entry doors where their prey is most common.
We also found another spider in the bathtub. When I saw it I thought he was coming after us for capturing his fellow spider! But we went after him first, and now we are studying him, too.
Georgia found that he is a spitting spider. His markings are identical, and he has the same size and shape as a spitting spider, or the Scytodes thoracica.
We learned that...It is able to "spit" a mixture of glue and venom over its prey. For this reason the prosoma has a domed shape to make room for the requiered glands. Scytodes is a small spider, smaller than 8 mm, and is accurate over a distance of about 2 cm. Spitting Spiders originally are tropical and subtropical species. In the temperate regions you can find them in houses.
Originally tropical, huh? That might explain the whole bathtub thing!
We read through the Children's Guide Insects & Spiders, learning about different types of creepy crawlers and their life cycles. We talked about the differences in insects and spiders. And we researched how to start a bug collection. We'll have to order some equipment, such as insect pins and a collection display box. We may try to make a collection display box ourselves, but that will have to wait until after our vacation.
Georgia, Olivia, and I played Scrabble Jr.. We used the beginner side of the board in which words are already displayed in criss-cross fashion. We needed to match up our letters to what is on the board, but we had to do it starting with the beginning of the words. Each time we completed a word we received a token. The person with the most tokens at the end of the game won. Olivia did really well with this game. She knew her letters and learned fairly quickly where the beginning of the word was.
Olivia and I also played Husker Du. It is a memory match game.
The girls each looked through their seashell collection. Georgia tried to match up pieces of a broken shell, and then she sketched them for her nature journal. We also pressed a couple flowers to add to the journal, too.
The girls have been doing great in taking care of the house plants. They love to water and mist them.
On Saturday, Georgia had her Park PALS class. Instead of being at the nature center the class met at the wildflower/woodland preserve. Olivia and I stayed with the class for a bit. They identified different wildflowers on the walk and discussed various terms, such as, weed, and alien plants, and they learned about poison ivy. They each had a clipboard with paper to sketch things they saw. After the class, Georgia told me it was her favorite one so far. She told me all about the flowers she saw, and she remembered a lot of their names too.
Georgia said her next class will be about owls, and that she might see some bats, too, because the class will be in the evening. This started a conversation about the differences between bats and owls. We discussed cold-blooded versus warm-blooded, and the characteristics of mammals. Saturday night the girls both painted me a picture for Mother's Day. Look for pictures of their paintings in a seperate Mother's Day post.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment