We had an early trick-or-treater come by our house. When she showed up on our porch, I was spooked to say the least!
My first impulse was to burn the whole house down, but I did some googling and discovered she was just a harmless garden spider. In the great tradition of literary spiders, I named her Charlotte and let her stay, in the hopes she’d keep the other creepy crawlers at bay.
The book I’m sharing today features another 8 legged spidey friend named Seaver – an orb weaver spider with a creative side. Seaver is born into a big family, but out of all his brothers and sisters, he is the only one who who doesn’t make perfectly round webs. Seaver is different. He looks up in the sky and is inspired (a new word we learned) by the shapes he sees in the stars. Bonnie enjoyed spotting the shapes in the sky, then turning the page to see how Seaver copied them into his web.
Every night, a new shape – triangles, rectangles, hexagons. Each morning his brothers and sisters exclaim, “What is THAT!” and tell him he must learn to make round webs like theirs if he is going to be an orb weaver.
Seaver’s creativity is more than just aesthetically pleasing – while his brothers’ and sisters’ webs do look just alike, Seaver’s unique web is the only one that seems to catch any food. Each morning Seaver finds a new “guest” to tend to. Bonnie thought it was funny that Seaver really meant he was eating his “guests” for breakfast.
Finally Seaver stands up to his brothers and sisters, and defends his web with pride. His brothers and sisters ask him to teach them how to spin shapes (they are hungry!). I liked the lesson on thinking creatively, and being proud of what makes you unique. We were able to talk about all the many places we see shapes, and learn some new vocabulary too.
We read our copy of Seaver the Weaver by Paul Czajak from Scribd. Try it free by going here, or you can also pick up your copy from Amazon (affilliate links).
Little extras:
A great interview with the author can be found here
I found a great teaching guide here
Do you Pinterest? Check out this board I found with some great spider activities and other spidey books for kids
