Tuesday 11th May

We began the day going for a hunt for some insects and bugs, so that we could look at them under a digital microscope. We found a spider and a sleepy fly, (that managed to warm up in the class and fly away) which was replaced with a dead one. As a class we spent some time
discussing the way we had drawn a spider and an insect the day before, especially talking about legs and body parts. After doing this we examined our fly and spider.

We took photos of the spider and put them into easiteach so we could use them on the tablet we, wrote a number on the end of each leg and discovered that spiders have 8 legs. We also found out that spider have two body parts and that rather than having legs all around their head and body, they all come off the front part . We also noticed that the spiders have two round things poking out of their head. Taylor wondered if they were the spiders eyes and Jessica thought that they may be hands ‘They may use them to pick up flies to eat them.’
I then asked the children how they think a spider climbs up wall and on the roof. Jeherson thought it may have something to do with their feet and Jessica and Taylor thought they use webs. Jessica thought it might be a good idea to draw some webs. I then asked the question where do they get webs from, Taylor said ‘They get webs off their bottoms and squeeze them.’

‘It is green and it doesn’t have any stripes on its wings’ Taylor
The first thing that startled them was the beautiful colours on this fly which up until now in their minds have all been black. We counted the number of legs and found out that flies only have 6 legs, but they have 3 parts to their bodies. Jessica noted that ‘He had red eyes and they were big’
We created a venn diagram about spiders and flies and at the moment we have found nothing that they have in common.

Questions or ideas to explore further:
How do spiders climb on walls and ceiling with their feet or webs?
What are the small round parts at the front of a spider, are they eyes or hands?
How do spiders make webs?
Why are a flies eyes so big?

Today we learnt:
· That spider and fly have different physical features that allow us to distinguish them.
Science Level 1 and 2: Recognise that there are lots of different living things in the world and that they can be grouped in different ways.
Investigating in Science:Extend their experiences and personal explanations of the natural world through exploration, play, asking questions, and discussing simple models.