Invite your middle- and upper-grade students to learn more about spiders online! Before you begin, distribute the CyberHunt Reproducible, below. Then send students to www.scholastic.com/cyberhuntkids, or directly to the interactive hunt.

1. Eight (or four pairs.)
2. Jaws or fangs.
3. Antarctica.
4. The anapid or armored spider.
5. Tarantula.
6. Light blue.
7. Spinnerets.
8. The fisher spider.
9. Black widow. Brown recluse.
Bonus: Any two of these (answers may vary): They control insect pests in agricultural crops; they eat cockroaches and other insects; they are an important food source for birds, lizards, wasps, and other animals; they transfer energy to above-ground food webs; their silk is used by birds for nest-building.

www.tooter4kids.com/Spiders/Spiders.htm
Send your students to this site to read the collection of spider poems, then invite them to write their own. This is a perfect writing prompt for the Halloween season! When students have revised and proofread their work, invite them to display the poems on a spiderweb-themed bulletin board. Use black bulletin-board paper for the background, and draw spiderweb designs with a silver gel pen. You might also wish to pull apart cotton batting and add plastic spiders for a true 3D effect around your students´ poems.

http://entomology.unl.edu/images/spiders/spiders.htm
Ewwwww! At this site, students can check out a huge gallery of up-close photos showing different spider species from around the world. Invite students to scroll through the site, reading up on a few favorite species; then challenge them to plot the habitats of their chosen spiders on a large class map.

www.sedl.org/scimath/pasopartners/spiders/lesson2a1.html
Follow the no-cook recipe at this site for fun, spider-shaped cookies. As students are munching, share with them a few favorite spider read alouds, such as the Miss Spider series, or the classic Charlotte's Web.

Spider Anatomy Diagrams
www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/arachnids/label/extanatomy/index.shtml
 
Spiders & Other Arthropods
www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/arthropod/Arthropodprintouts.shtml
 
Common Spiders
http://arachne.cofc.edu/HVE/myspider.html
 
World Almanac for Kids
www.worldalmanacforkids.com/explore/animals/spider.html
 
All About Arachnids
www.earthlife.net/chelicerata/arachnid.html
 
All About Spider Silk
www.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/biota/arthropods/Arachnids/spidersilk.htm
 
Insecta Inspecta´s Arachnophobia Page
www.insecta-inspecta.com/culent/arach/
 
Arachnophobia & Other Spider Facts
www.earthlife.net/chelicerata/arachnophobia.html

 
Karyn M. Peterson is the associate editor of Instructor .
 
CyberHunt © 2004 Scholastic Inc.
 
CYBERHUNT SAFETY: All the sites contained in the CyberHunt have been reviewed by our staff. At press time, all links are safe and consist of educational material. However, we are unable to control transfers of URLs after publication. We strongly urge teachers to review all sites before sharing them with students.

Download the Spooky Spiders CyberHunt Reproducible. To open the Reproducible, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader software. If you do not have this software already installed, click here to download it FREE.