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This lesson refers to a PowerPoint presentation (not included), a worksheet (not included) and a personal religious belief (included), all of which may be omitted without seriously compromising the benefit of this lesson.

Teacher: jar, spider.
Students: handout about spiders, willing spirits

The student will be able to write a short paragraph about the experiment performed in class, as well as answer questions about the spider's life cycle with 95% accuracy.

"How many of you love spiders? Not many of us do, huh? I know I used to really despise spiders. However, recently I have been trying to see them as God sees them, as a part of His creation. Underneath their ugly (or at least they are to me) bodies, they are really unique creatures with unique talents.

Today we are going to have a little fun learning about spiders, and observing one up close and personal."

A PowerPoint will be involved in this class to teach the lesson. Class would then proceed into the textbook/handouts/PowerPoint where learning about the spider would take place. First, it would be explained that spiders are arachnids, not insects, because of their eight legs instead of only six. Another reason they are arachnids is that they only have two body sections, as opposed to the insects' three. The PowerPoint would be used to show some different types of spiders. Pictures and facts about spiders would be shown. The teacher will show pictures of big spiders, and little spiders, hairy spiders, and smooth spiders. (These pictures can be diagrams or actual photos. Photos would be more interesting to the children.) Facts about the spiders would be taught on these slides as well.

"Ok, so we know that they are arachnids and not insects, but how are they born and how do they grow? Well, a spider starts out as an egg and is laid by the mother spider into a strong silk sac. After a few days they hatch and little spiderlings emerge. When they emerge they are lightly colored and eat food that the mother provides. As they grow, they molt their skin (which means they shed) and become darker in color. Before long they are able to make their own silk, and ready to leave the nest. When they are out on their own they spin their own web. Good spinning places are places such as corners, bushes or trees. At first it is small, but as it grows, the web does as well. A spider generally live up to a year, however, some live even longer. Now we are going to do a spider experiment.

Home Sweet Home

Information: In this simple experiment, a spider (provided by the teacher) will be placed in a jar in the classroom. The students will have the responsibility to place things in the jar that will cater to the spider's needs. Things for it to eat, as well a place for it to spin a web.

Materials: Spider, jar, twigs, grass, rocks.

Conclusion: As the spider lives in our jar, we notice the habitat that we have created for it and how it adapts to it. We would notice the web that it would hopefully spin.

For this part of the lesson, I would assign the students the paragraph report about the experiment we performed with the spider. They would simply describe the jar and things like that. Then I would pass out a quiz about the lesson that was taught.

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