A spider setting up camp near the front door sparked a detour from our regularly scheduled academic program –

NON-FICTION:  Arachnomania, by Maria Tatar.  A scholarly, readable, pretty interesting treatise.  My son and I have found lots to highlight with our yellow felt pen:  
– spider positives (like being essential to the balance of the ecosystem)
– EVERYONE is just a few feet away from a spider (except those in Antarctica)
– ballooning:  where spiders release a silk thread and catch wind currents to float from one spot to another.  How can ballooning not be our our favorite concept of the week?  
– Author Tatar informs us that the best explanation of how a spider manufactures it silk thread is found in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web!

FICTION:  Speaking of which, E.B. White’s classic, Charlotte’s Web.  Our copy includes a forward by author Kate DiCamillo, who admits she reluctantly – finally – read the book as an adult because a writing teacher insisted that “the book was a miracle of storytelling” and “anyone who wanted to write must read Charlotte’s Web”.  Pretty strong endorsement.

POETRY:  The Spider and the Fly (1859).  Mary Howitt, prolific author and pioneer for women’s rights in the UK. I think the last time we went over this poem was about two years ago, but my son remembered every word.  Bravo!

YE OLDE ENGLISH PROVERB:  “If you wish to live and thrive, let the spider run alive” (in print, 1867).  This was a house rule when I grew up.  We would slide any spider found indoors onto a note card and escort the critter outside where he/she could begin life anew.  (Concept discussed with my son as we gently moved the spider from the front door area).

Story Problem – Farmer Brown welcomes academia!  A university entomology (vocab!) research team, headed by Professor Toni M, spent two weeks on Farmer Brown’s ranch identifying spider species.  There are 60 different species in Farmer Brown’s state and Professor M’s final report identified 45 species on the property.  What percentage of the state’s spider species (tongue twister) were found on Farmer Brown’s ranch?
a)  25%     b)  45%     c)  75%     d) 90%    

Professor M informed Farmer Brown that only .05% of spider species produce venom that could harm one of his farmhands. About how many spider species on the ranch were the farmhands on high alert for?
a)  1      b)  3     c)  6     d)  9  (answers at bottom of post)

Classical Spiders

My mom (“The Peach”) did not like classical music.  She said it (“it”) (obviously speaking for all classical music) sounded like a bunch of spiders.  Whoa.  Spiders.  Is it possible that her elementary school teachers were loading up the Victrola with string quartet music?  String quartets can be screechy (so maybe spidery?) and rather avant-garde…sort of an acquired taste. (It grieves me to admit that my son and I are too unsophisticated to enjoy most string quartets)(and we have sampled A LOT).

So, if my son and I were introducing young students to orchestral music we might steer away from string quartets and suggest the likes of:

• Alexander Glazunov’s Symphony No. 4 in E flat major, Movement II (1893) (or as we like to refer to it:  Romping Goats).  This piece transports us smack into the middle of a meadow. We can feel fresh air, we can imagine goats scampering from one clump of weeds to the next.  Rambunctious, playful, joyful –

• Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Movement IV (1845) (or as we like to refer to it:  The Cat and Mouse Confrontation).  The back and forth, the advance and retreat…could be straight out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  This is an old recording, but Itzhak Perlman’s performance cannot be bested –

• Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Movement III (1878) (or as we like to refer to it:  Picnic Ants).  Here we have Gustavo Dudamel conducting what looks like a rehearsal with the LA Philharmonic in the Hollywood Bowl, during early days of COVID.  Anyway, when we listen to this, I do a running commentary about the line of ants marching toward a picnic basket, rerouting around a large fallen leaf, hoisting potato chip fragments on their backs to bring back to the queen –

• Leroy Anderson, Jazz Pizzicato (1938) (or as we like to refer to it:  Popcorn Pizzicato).  As “Jazz Pizzicato”, this piece did nothing for my son.  But as soon as we teamed it up with a popcorn cart story problem we could hear the kernels pop pop popping, and this piece has become one of my son’s favorites –

       

But back “classical music sounding like a bunch of spiders”.  Dear Peach-Up-In-Heaven, exactly what is wrong with hearing spiders in the music?   May we present our soundtrack for our arachnid semi-friends:  

• Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony, movement II (1934) – We hear the scampering of spiders…lots of scampering.  And YIKES, maybe there is a bit of a “bundling up the prey” theme worked in to the composition –

• Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 13 for Solo Violin (first published in 1820) – What we hear is web construction…sliding up and down the web and climbing up and down the web.  Web perfection is a lot of work –

• Victor Young’s Around the World in 80 Days (1956), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.  Yeah, yeah, it isn’t classical, but we think this is THE music for ballooning spiders.  Anyway, OH MY GOSH, listen to what a junior high school orchestra can do with this score.  This makes us smile big  –  

This was fun!  (And now back to our regular scheduled academic program.)
Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(story problem answers:  c)  75%  and a)  1 (actually .0225, but why not error on the safe side)(watch out for those brown recluse spiders)