By Dottie Dewberry For the WPT
MABEN — With fall in the air, it was appropriate that the Maben Public Library Story Hour topic would be spiders. Friday, Ms. Mary chose “Super Spiders” to read; this is a Scholastic Science Vocabulary Reader, which is more factual than fictional.
The book explains that a spider belongs to the animal group arachnids. They have been here since the dinosaurs.
Spiders have two body parts; whereas, insects have three. Spiders have eight legs, but insects have only six legs.
They have four pairs of eyes, which makes eight. Unfortunately, they don’t see too well at that. They don’t have noses or ears. They smell through holes in their legs. The tiny hairs on their legs hear and taste for the spiders. Now isn’t that strange.
What spiders do is really special; they make silk, which is super strong and is used to make their webs.
Spiders are beneficial to society; they eat more than 2,000 bugs in a year, which they catch using their sticky webs.
More than 50,000 kinds of spiders are in the world. Some are small but the goliath spider is big as a dinner plate.
Baby spiders are called spiderlings; some even ride on their mother’s back. Jumping spiders can jump more than 50 times their body length.
After the story, Ms. Mary handed out precut paper plates with a yellow piece of yarn attached and with some instructions the kids created their own spider web with a spider ring attached.
Next, they used crayons to draw the two-part spider with the eight legs, and then using watercolors spent the remainder of the Story Hour watercoloring.
The other book that Ms. Mary read was titled “The Very Busy Spider,” which was all about a spider that met many animals but was too busy to play with them because she was spinning her web. In the end she fell asleep because she had a busy day.
Finally, another Story Hour was over, books were checked out and goodbyes were given, and they all filed out until Oct. 19.
The Story Hour is open to all children aged 3 to 5.