:scared2: :dancing-banana:
Yesterday, God supplied the science lesson for my first-graders. I was sitting on my stool in front of the 11 students, reading them a Beatrix Potter story, the Tale of Benjamin Bunny, when all at once, a girl in the front row suppressed a shriek and pointed frantically to my left. A boy saw the spiderling before I did, leaped from his seat, and chaos reigned for a moment as DOZENS of tiny jumping spiders let themselves down from the ceiling! I managed to calm the class by grabbing onto a few webs and gently carry the babies to the window ledge where several potted plants grow. I got out magnifying glasses, and soon all but one child was busy studying a spider. A few spiders were placed in Petri dishes with magnifying lids. We drew and coloured our pictures, counted legs, eyes, palps, etc, then we watched a YouTube of a "Really CuteJumping Spider." The more advanced pupils wrote sentences about them, the less able made sequencing cartoons. Everyone phonetically analysed the words "jumping" and "spider," the former appearing as a bonus word for next week's dictation sentences. My top student took note of the Latin words on the computer. Everyone added "phidippus apacheanus" to his diagram. After that we pretended to be jumping spiders catching gnats. Each student got a length of sewing thread. At 3:00, we set the captive spiderlings free out the window. Some will remain in the room to control the biting gnats that plague us every year. These come from the basement kitchen of the building attached to our school. The children will remember a lesson like this, whereas, if I'd merely read to them and told them how to color a picture, most would soon forget.
Topic: Homeschool Elementary Science (Read 2658 times)