Spiders are so misunderstood. Last Thursday, Ijams educators did an outreach program, "The Truth about Spiders" for the kindergarten kids at Gibbs Elementary School. And believe us, their teachers had prepared them beforehand.
Eight legs. Yep. Eight eyes. Yep. Two body parts. Yep. Plus that spiders are predators that eat lots and lots and lots of insects, so they are really good to have around.
We took Rosie, our Chilean rose hair tarantula and we found a lovely garden spider, a.k.a. writing spider outside sitting in her orb web, so the young spider-ologists got to examine her closely.
Ijams has been doing outreach nature programs to local schools since the 1970s.