The preschoolers have displayed an interest in bugs during outside time during their walks and investigations in the nearby woods. During these activities, children have been able to exercise their observation skills and try to find out answers to what they are curious about. Bugs seem to be a topic that, even when we don’t plan an activity around it, a discussion seems to appear!
Chinyere ran across the room enthusiasticly stating that she had found a spider in the quiet corner of the room. She was very excited about her discovery and showed Chase where it was. Chase retrieved a piece of paper and put the spider on it. He brought it over to the table for the children to take a closer look. As the children watched the spider moving around on the piece of paper, they began to vocalize their observations.
Chinyere said, “It's a baby spider because it is smal. I wonder where the mother spider is?”
Jakob said the spider was "very fast” as it moved around the paper.
Aaron communicated and questioned his thought of, “Where is the spider web?”
Chase decided to place the spider in his hand and let the spider crawl around. This prompted many of the children to want to hold onto the spider and let it crawl around in their hands. Jakob and Aaron both held the spider and noted that “it tickled” as the spider crawled around in their hand. Chinyere was eager to hold onto the spider but then changed her mind and just wanted to watch it instead. Octavia didn’t want to hold the spider at first but then decided she wanted to experience the spider crawling in her hands since she was curious. As the spider crawled around she said, “I want to squish the spider.” This led to another discussion. Chase told the children that if they squished the spider that would hurt it and that they didn’t want to hurt the spider.
Chase held the spider in his hand for a bit longer. Aaron then observed that the spider was slowly falling from Chase’s hand and looked like it was floating in the air. Aaron said, “It is hanging from its web” and that is why it was falling so slowly.
As we continued to sit at the table we continued to discuss and talk about spiders. We talked about how many legs a spider has and where spiders live. Aaron explained, “Spiders live outside in webs on the wall.” When our discussion wrapped up, it was time to let the spider go, so Chase placed it inside of the plant ecosystem that is in our classroom.
Children continue to have questions and find opportunities to engage in activities involving bugs. It was great to see the children work together to further talk and discuss bugs. Opportunities like this continue to develop their observation and language skills and engage them in their interests.
