Caught in a Web

Challenge
This is the time of year when we often start noticing more spiders and their webs. We tend to associate spiders and webs with Halloween. Why? Well, many spiders reach adulthood in the late summer and early fall. So, they become more visible to us, and there are more spiders to create even more webs. Spider silk, the strongest fiber in nature, is used to make their webs. It is stronger than steel and thinner than a strand of hair! Webs are used to help spiders catch their prey and to help alert the spider of predators. If you haven’t guessed it by now, this month’s challenge has to deal with spider webs. Your challenge is to create a spider web to capture the most items. What material would work best for capturing the items? What shape, size, and design should the web be to be most effective? Can you emulate an actual spider’s web from nature?
Your spider web creation does have some criteria and constraints. Determine specific dimensions for your webs so they turn out to be generally the same size. The web must look like a spider web, meaning with strands and holes. The objects being caught in the web must be the same with identical processes of how the objects reach the webs.

Materials

• various types of tape (scotch, masking, packing, duct, etc.)
• various types of string (thick, thin, yarn, thread, fishing, kite, etc.)
• scissors
• paper clips
• straws
• Velcro
• various cups
• objects to catch in web (plastic spider rings, Styrofoam peanuts, pom poms, connecting cubes, bits of paper, etc.)
• any other additional materials

Hints and Tips for Success

1. Allow students planning and discussion time by having them experiment with the items to see how flexible, movable, and heavy they are. Also, let students experiment with the objects they are catching in their webs.
2. After experimenting, allow student groups to plan their design by drawing it out and labeling their materials being used. Include as many ways to improve their webs as needed.
3. For differentiation, adjust the amount of materials available and allowed to use, add any additional materials, take away certain materials, show them different kinds of spider webs, challenge them to collect a certain number of objects or more, change the dimensions or shape of the web, use different objects to catch. Adjustments could be made to make it more challenging or simpler.
4. Make sure to standardize the dimensions of the web so testing can be fair for all creations. Also, standardize how the objects will be reaching the webs. Will groups hold their webs up in one place and throw the objects at the web from another? Will the web be held horizontally or vertically? Will they be tossed one at a time or all at the same time? Will the students develop some kind of launcher so tosses are all the same? OR will the students think of something completely different?
5. Connect to math by discussing dimensions and what that means, measurement, shapes, symmetry, translations, angles, etc.
6. Connect to science by discussing predator, prey, survival behavior, food chains/webs, habitats, structure and function of spiders, how humans mimic organisms, etc.
7. Connect to ELA by researching the different kinds of spiders, the webs they weave, and why they weave them that way and/or by reading The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle, Spiders by Aaron Carr, Spiders and Their Webs by Linda Taglianferro, Weaving Wonders by Nancy Loewen, Spinning Spiders by Melvin Berger or National Geographic Readers: Spiders by Laura Marsh to explore different kinds of spiders, spider facts, and more about spider webs.