Make your own climbing spider
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Audience
Primary school -
Learning stage
Early Stage 1, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 -
Learning area
Creative Arts, Science -
Type
Learning resources
On this page...
Spiders have amazing adaptations that help them to live in almost every habitat. They can make silk webs, sense their prey and danger with hairs on their body, jump amazing distances, and even have camouflage to make them look like bird poo!
- Spiders use silk for many different purposes throughout their lives.
- Spiders can fly! Spiders can release a thread of silk that is caught by the wind, which can carry them a few metres or up to hundreds of kilometres. This is called ballooning and is mainly done by spiderlings to help them to disperse.
- Some spider silk is stronger than steel.
- What do all spiders have in common?
- How are the three groups of spiders different from each other?
- Why are spiders important in food webs?
Materials
For this activity, you will need:
- printable worksheet (see below);
- cardboard;
- colour pencils;
- scissors
- sticky tape
- straws (cardboard is better for the environment)
- string or wool.
The St Andrew’s Cross Spider is a weaver that is often found in Australian gardens. Read about the features of burrowers, hunters and weavers in the printable worksheet before following the instructions to create your own climbing spider!
- Colour in and cut out your spider.
- Cut two small pieces of straw about 3cm long.
- Stick the two pieces of straw to the back of your spider with sticky tape.
- Once your two pieces of straw are attached, thread some string through one straw piece and then back down through the other creating a loop.
- Place a friend’s finger through the loop of string.
- Turn your spider over and pull the bottoms of the string out and away from each other.
- Your spider should climb up its web to your friend’s finger!
