So, everyone likes spiders, right? What’s not to love? The long, hairy legs, the multiple, beady eyes, or the fangs ready to pierce the skin? Yeah, OK. They are kind of gross. We took a poll in our class and found out that about half of us hate spiders and the others like them, but we all find them very interesting. Mrs. Fraher hates them ever since she got bit by a recluse spider. It was very painful for her.
Our classroom is near a door leading to a playground near a desert wash. This means that we get all kinds of creepy crawlies coming through the cracks in the door. Here are some pictures we took of some of them:
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- A tarantula stopping to smell the flowers outside our class. Did you know tarantulas can live up to 20 years?
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- Not so much a creepy crawly.
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- Kind of a fuzzy picture but it shows a black widow spider.
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- Geckos loved hiding out under our bean bag chairs.
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- Praying mantis on the hunt for the other insects in our hall.
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- We don’t know what this is but it looked interesting. Some kind of grasshopper.
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- Scorpion crossing the road…we did a post on scorpions earlier using this guy. Check it out!
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- A caterpillar looking for a place to make a cocoon. Unfortunately, he escaped and was found a few months later (not so alive).
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- This spider was lurking outside our door. We caught him with the help of Mrs. Goucher’s class. See the balls on the end of his antennae?
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- Poor scorpion. We found him dead, so don’t think we killed him. Thought we would get some up close viewing of him.
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- We immediately started to do some research on spiders. Have to know what we are looking at.
Let’s find out more about spiders. Here is what we learned after our research:
Spiders are not insects. They have eight legs and insects have six legs.
Not all spiders spin webs. This is because they can’t make silk.
Most spiders have eight eyes. Ughhh! Some spiders that live in caves and soil have no eyes at all!
There are about 35,000 different species of spiders in the world. There are 3,000 spiders in North America.
Spiders have claws at the end of their legs.
Arizona has two very poisonous spiders: the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse. There are three main kids of black widow spiders and about 13 species of recluses. Not all of them live just in Arizona.
Do you want to find out more about spiders? Here are a couple great sites where we found our information. Explorit Science Center and Arizona-Desert Museum: Spiders
Let’s have a little fun with a spider. Here is a video Mrs. Fraher found on Facebook on a spider. We thought it was super funny.
What facts can you tell us about spiders?
Have you ever been bit by a spider?
What spider species do you like the best?
