It’s funny how ideas germinate and grow. This idea seemed to grow from a whole garden of influences.

As a kindy teacher, I created a simple collage spider web using pva glue and cut out shapes to follow up a spider encounter with the children I was working with there. Mr 6 was impressed and very keen to try this out.

Mr 2 loves “The Spider Book” which is known to adults as “One Hungry Spider.” We talked about how the author/illustrator Jeannie Baker creates her illustrations using a collage of materials found in the environment/setting she is trying to illustrate. This book happens to be about an orb web spider.

I was reading the walking in wild weather times blog and came across an awesome photo of an orbweb spider. Of course,

I made a comment and was quickly crowded by Mr 8 and Mr 6. During our discussion I mentioned I hadn’t been able to get any photos as good as that. Both scorned this idea. “But there aren’t any spiders like that in the mangroves,” they said. Of course I had to prove my point. “And then can we make our own spider web?” asked Mr 6.

That’s how “Searching for spiders”, “morning walk” and “afternoon walk” all happened in such quick succession. We collected things we could use to create the spider webs, bodies and legs on the first of these walks.

 

 

Then came the creating.

I guided Mr 2’s hands a little to begin with so he got the idea of drizzling the glue onto the paper to make the spider web shape. 

He got the hang of it pretty quickly and added his own touches. Mr 6 and Mr 8 had no problems. We discussed what we could use to add a golden shimmer to the web.

When Mr 6 saw his dried web he told me that he’d added gold to the spider’s legs because the one we found on the boardwalk had gold at the bends.