I love Eric Carle's book, The Very Busy Spider! (I love all of his books really, but I especially love this book for this time of year.) I tend to read it often in the fall, probably because this is the time when we start seeing more spiders out right before the cold weather hits. Also it lends itself to discussing the difference between arachnids and insects. But maybe the biggest reason I love doing spider activities in the fall is because these are activities that are culturally appropriate. Even if in your school you can't talk about that crazy word "Halloween". You can ALWAYS talk about spiders!!!
If you haven't read it, this book is great for PK and early Elementary kiddos. Its a repetitive story about how numerous farm animals want to play with a spider but the spider is too busy to play (you'll have to get the book to find out why). You can discuss farm animals, the noises the make, the things they like to do. As the book is repetitious your children will begin to repeat or predict and anticipate words in the story as you read!
Inspired by this book I made a fun little game that you could do in conjunction with reading the book or separately as a reinforcement activity! So its great for any type of speech, language, voice, fluency, social skills activity.
**Communication Station: Speech Therapy, PLLC reserves the creative rights to all materials created and distributed via communicationstationspeechtx.blospot.com. For personal use only! NOT for redistribution! If your friends want a copy, feel free to direct them to this website where they can download and print their own copy.**
Your students will each get their own spider web sheet.
The object is to collect all four flies AND their spider from the hodge-podge of spiders, flies, and farm animals that you place in a bucket, pile or even under stimulus cards!
Symbols from Boardmaker: The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2010 by Mayer-Johnson LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission. Boardmaker™ is a trademark of Mayer-Johnson LLC. DynaVox Mayer-Johnson; 2100 Wharton Street; Suite 400; Pittsburgh, PA 15203; Phone: 1 (800) 588-4548; Fax: 1 (866) 585-6260; Email: mayer-johnson.usa@mayer-johnson.com; Web site: www.mayer-johnson.com
If a student has all four flies (but not their spider yet) and picks up another fly, the fly must return to the pile and the game moves on to the next person.
Full PDF Version Below:
Enjoy! Happy Talking!!!!
So creative, this is great! A nice addition to my Halloween/Fall materials. Thank you!
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Rachel
Thanks Rachel for your feedback! I'm so glad you'll be able to use the game! I love spiders!
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