Every new "theme" we investigate in preschool I always do one center exploring it with play dough. It always takes me a while to get the table just right. I want it to be child led and very open ended, but I also want it to be specific in its purpose. I never say, "and here you make a spider with play dough, use the pipe cleaners for legs." I want them to reach that point by themselves. But if they don't want to make a spider, that's great, use your imagination, make what ever you want. For me its about finding that balance. Some days I find it, other days I don't. Mostly I couldn't decide if I wanted to add plastic spiders or pictures of spiders to the table to help model. In the end I decided too because I wanted to see if they understood what we had read and talked about in large group - that spiders have 2 body parts and the legs come out of the body, not the head. I though having model spiders would help remind them.
We got some GREAT spiders out of our play dough.
We read one book that talked about how some mother spiders carry their babies on theri back. Madison told me her beads were the spider babies.
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