The "Spiders Have Eight Legs" Educational Society

In general, I feel that one of the most beneficial things about the spider unit (at least to me) is all the practice we do counting to eight.  This is of course because spiders have eight legs.

It's amazing to me, actually, how often you will find spiders out there in the world with six legs (or even some other odd number).  Once I even walked into a whole kindergarten class full of spiders made with six legs.  I was aghast.  I know, I know - I'm a spider snob.  In fact, my own personal children often roll their teenage eyes at me as I critically count the legs of all spiders that I see in the stores during this time of the year.  "Oh, only six", I will say disparagingly, shaking my head and tisk, tisking as I put it the malformed spider in my shopping card.

Then at school during our small group we pull out a variety of "real" spiders ones and "fake" ones.  We then count their legs and then sort them into two groups.  Thumbs up for the eight-legged spiders, thumbs down for any other number.


So, as I write this, I can see now that it's partially about the practice about counting to eight, and it partially (and perhaps more) about making sure spiders are represented as they should be.  I like to call it (to myself) the "Spiders Have Eight Legs" Educational Society.   Kind of like a Spider Public Service Message - but not.  Which is really funny, because in real life I don't like spiders at all and am happy enough with them whatever number of legs they want to have - as long as they're far away from me.

Anyway, here are some spider pictures that the Little People made last week.  Granted, it's one thing to count out eight legs and another to draw them (or stop drawing when you get to eight), but all in all I thought they were pretty cute:

Tomorrow: Paper Spiders