The Spider Expert

Cody recently finished his unit in preschool on spiders, so they had their "culmination" where the parents get to come and the kids show them everything they have learned.  He always tells me how he is a spider expert and I think maybe he really is!  Here's what he taught mom and dad in our short 30 min lesson:

The parts of the spider; how many eyes they have; how many legs.  He even knew the pedipalps and spinerettes.

How the spider lays eggs and creates the egg sac, complete with eggs (nerds candy) and two different types of silk to protect it.

We even got to watch a video of it. . .

Then Cody demonstrated how the spider wraps its prey and gets ready to eat it.  He knew all about how it injects it with poison and turns it to mush so it can ingest it.  Heavy stuff for a 4-yr old!

At one of the other centers, Cody drew a spider and told us that they have blue blood.  He also drew an insect to show us the difference between the two.

Then he showed us the spider web in the top of the little playhouse that he had created with a couple friends during center time.  This is the perfect activity for him!

Thanks Cody for teaching us all about spiders!  We love our little spider expert!

I hate spiders!

Recently we have had a few unfortunate visitors to our home - nasty black widows. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps! I can't stand spiders period, and those things really creep me out. So the problem is that Cody likes to pick up all types of bugs, including spiders, and bring them in the house and show me. So when Russ saw that we had black widows and several black widow webs, he emphasized to the boys that they should NEVER touch the black spiders with red bellies. So Corbin and Cody were playing outside on Monday and they ran in and told me they saw a "bad spider". It was Corbin who was telling me this, so I thought maybe he was just scared of it and wanted me to kill it. But sure enough, I went out there and right by their playset was a big, sneaky, disgusting, creepy black widow. Since I was in my socks, I ran back in and slipped on my dress shoes - the closest thing I could find - and went back out to smash the little bugger. I hate even thinking about it! Aagh! So the conversation that proceeded was what I really wanted to write about. It went something like this:

Cody: there are good spiders and bad spiders. The black ones are the bad spiders. They could kill you. Then we would have to have a new mommy.

Me: That would be really sad.

Corbin: But then Daddy would have to get married and we would get to be in the wedding.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. Kids are so bizarre.

I want to be a spider

Corbin likes to do this thing while we are eating meals called "table talk" (he got it from the kids cup at Red Robin), it's basically just random questions that every person has to answer. Example: what do you want to be when you grow up, what is your favorite color, where do you want to visit, etc, etc. Yesterday it was "What animal would you want to be and why?"

Corbin: I would like to be a spider. [Mom: Why?] Because then I could build webs to protect myself from everything and I could go in everyone's house and they wouldn't see me.

Cody: Ummm, a tiger. [Mom: Why do you want to be a tiger?] Cody: Roarrrrr!