Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Very Busy Spider will find this post helpful. It includes resource recommendations, free teaching ideas, and information about the book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging interactive read aloud lessons based on this story.
With themes of goal setting and patience, this The Very Busy Spider picture book by Eric Carle is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too! Learn more about this book below!
Engage Your Students with The Very Busy Spider Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Very Busy Spider. You can find it in the section below.
- Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
- Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Very Busy Spider reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE VERY BUSY SPIDER SUMMARY
One morning, a spider gets blown across a field by the wind and lands on a fence post near a farm. She starts to build her web between two fence posts and works hard on staying focused.
Many animals on the farm come up to the spider and ask her if she wants to play with them. Each time, the spider keeps working on her web because she is very busy.
At the end of the story, the spider finishes building her web and catches a pesky fly in it. The spider falls asleep because she had a very busy day.
THE VERY BUSY SPIDER LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.
When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for The Very Busy Spider, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.
We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.
READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
The text-based The Very Busy Spider reading comprehension questions focus on:
- analyzing illustrations
- sequencing
- visualizing
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- goal setting
- patience
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- verb tense
- suffixes
THE VERY BUSY SPIDER ACTIVITIES
You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:
- comprehension questions
- 30 writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for The Very Busy Spider?
- Lexile® Measure: 330L
- Guided Reading Level: I
- DRA Level: 16
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 1.9
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Eric Carle. It was illustrated by Eric Carle.
What genre is The Very Busy Spider?
It is a fiction book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.
How many pages are in the book?
The story is 24 pages long.