Spiders and Tea

It's been two years since I last focused on spiders as a theme for the kids.  After reading my friend Chel's post on Charlotte's Web, I was inspired to talk about spiders again!  I loved her neat spider web things she did, though I wanted to do something different.  Two years ago I made spider treats for the kids, but this time I made edible webs.

Here's what we did:

Jaden William received Charlotte's Web from my sister on his fourth birthday, and I read it to him then.  He's read it two or three times himself since.  Trust and Liv, and even Jaden, were excited about my reading it to them now.  They've all seen the more recent make of the movie, too, as we also own it.  I love Charlotte's Web, because of its lessons on morality, friendship, and life; its vocabulary; and I liked how it taught some about spiders and why they are beneficial!  It even teaches about the eight parts of a spider's leg.  You can't beat that. ;-)

All of our children's books on spiders are very enjoyable.  The first Eency Weency Spider used to have a working music box that played the tune of the song by the same name.  It was a gift to William from my momma.  I have always sang the book to the kids, and I still do so even without the music. The second Eency Weency Spider above was read several times, as it's so fun, weaving several well-known nursery rhymes into the rhyming storyline.

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle is a fun sensory book with its raised slick-feeling spider webs and such.  I got out a piece of paper and showed the kids how you can pencil the web on the paper by placing it on top of the raised web (shown in center of following picture collage).

I got some activities for Trust and Liv out of the I Can Cut and I Can Draw books.  I also read the entry on "spider" from my copy of Southwestern's My Fun With Words (Book 2, 1974), and I found some links on drawing spiders, spider songs, and spider-themed games:

How to Draw a Spider

"Nasty Spider" song

"Itsy Bitsy Spider" song

Simple, pointless spider game, but fun for a couple minutes for a four-year-old

A neat little spider game where you move and jump to eat insects, good for hand-eye coordination.

Spider game where you build web and eat flies, ladybugs, etc., too difficult for four-year-old, but fun for a six-year-old, like Trusten.

Olivia got in some good practice gluing thin fragile pieces of paper.  I guided her through a good portion of it, showing her the steps of running her finger down one section before then pressing down the other section, so as not to tear the spider legs apart.

The Miss Spider's Tea Party by David Kirk is a new book that I bought on Amazon for Liv's fourth birthday.  This was the second book that we read several times.  I absolutely loved it and am glad they found it enjoyable, too.  What a cute little tale it was!  Unlike Charlotte, Miss Spider doesn't eat bugs, though.  She drinks tea and eats flower petals.  I loved the vividly-colored graphics!

We've had fun with tea, too.  We've read about tea on Wikipedia, and talked about the health benefits, the different kinds of tea, and also herbal teas other than what comes from the Camelia sinensis plant.

My sister got me a wonderful gift set for my birthday this year that included a bamboo box (which has come in so handy at hiding my little secret treats), a little glass teapot, and a box of "enchanted blossoms," being a variety of teas.  It's so neat.  You put a dried, compacted blossom into the pot, heat your water, pour it over the blossom, replace the lid, and let steep, and as it does, the blossom blooms out.  You can also reuse the blossom once.  Then you've got a tasty little drink!  Of course, I've shared this delight with the children.

Then I let the three youngest kids have a tea party of their own.

I brought out a box holding special treasure.  

My mother-in-law gave me this set a few years ago and told me she had wanted to give the set to her first granddaughter.  Well, Olivia is just that.  Isn't it a lovely little miniature tea set?  Really, as you can see, some of the pieces are another set or part of a set.  The pieces in the second set can later be used for decor, as they are tiny enough for Miss Spider and her insect friends to use.  ;-)

No fancy table and chairs for this tea party.  And though I did explain how to "properly" handle the teacups, the kids didn't much care for that and quickly practiced their own style.   Oh, and we used regular black tea.  We always have plenty on hand, as Nathan is a devoted iced tea drinker, and the kids like it quite a bit that way, too.

In the end, you can see that Trusten simply thought it best to lie on his belly with his dirty feet in the air.  Elizabeth spilled tea all over the blanket, too.  LOL   And rather than cookies or pie, I made up some of what I call my Chocolate Oat Yum-a-Lots.  Yes, that is really what I call them.  I can make them up very quickly, and they are very delicious with dark chocolate, butter (or coconut oil), oats, and dried coconut.  I whip up the stuff without measuring, spoon them on a plate oiled with coconut oil, and put them in the freezer to harden. 

I also compiled several spider pictures I've taken over the past few years so that the kids could practice using a field guide to identify species.  The kids knew without a guide immediately what the venomous two were!  So glad.  :-)  Also, not pictured, Olivia sure knows what a cellar spider is.  We leave some of them in our house be for awhile, as we live near the woods, and they always get in, and they do indeed kill the flies, but eventually whenever I do my rounds of cleaning the cobwebs, they get sucked up, too.  :-(  It's kind of sad, but I also don't want them breeding out of control, because that means more webs.

1. Wolf spider (and it's babies on its back; on our front porch)
2. Argiope (on lattice at side of our front porch)
3. Brown recluse (venomous; on a job site of Nathan's)
4. Black widow (venomous; pictured inside a jar after JW found it in the tractor bucket)
5. White crab spider (our garden)
6. Orb weaver/argiope (of some sort, I believe, but I'm not sure exactly)
7. Jumping spider (attacking caterpillar on our front door)
8. Wood spider (on our carpet...yikes!!)

We normally have orb weavers (which kind of spider Charlotte was) in the fall in abundance. They love making their webs in our doorways, but we didn't see any this fall!  Na thinks maybe the chickens at them too much.

And...the treat!

I wanted to use pretzels to make an orb web but couldn't figure out what I should use as the missing component, so I used Google and found a few people using white chocolate chips (melted).  It's a challenge to get that to work well!  I had to use a freezer bag, too, to do the squeezing.  But the kids were impressed.  They thought they looked great, and they all four enjoyed them.

Until next time...