Thursday, May 22, 2008

What Animal are you Afraid of?















Ashlyn just finished up her last unit at school on "Being Afraid". Her teacher sent home a homework assignment to build a model of a habitat for an animal that she is afraid of. Ashlyn choose the Black Widow Spider and gathered as much information about the Black Widow Spider as she could. There was a research organizer sheet to fill out and keep her on track. She had 3 weeks to complete the project and prepare a 2-3min. presentation to share What animal she was afraid of and Why, Where the animal lives, and How it makes its habitat. She is only a 1st grader.
She First had to create a Black widow Spider out of black model magic clay. With a red hour glass shape under its belly and a glossy finish on the spider using clear nail polish. Noah and Ashlyn choose a box to place gathered bark and wood pieces. They cut out a square window on the side of the box so that you could look in to see the Black Widow. She placed the spider under the wood pieces and strung up a web. She rolled a cotton ball until it looked like an egg sac. She painted the wood pieces and egg sac with glow in the dark paint. Then we placed 3 glow sticks in various places inside wood pieces. Then she wrote Beware: Black Widow!!! and her habitat was complete. She wrote her presentation questions on index cards and practiced on us. Her teacher said she did an outstanding job on her presentation and habitat. She also said Ashlyn was the most organized in the class. We are so glad that Ashlyn is doing so well in school and loving 1st grade.

1 comment:

Kurt & Rachel Keyser said...

That does sound like a big project for a 1st grader! However, it is pretty cool. Good job Ashlyn!