I need help my son's is doing a science project on Spiders.

[shoppingdarlin]

My son has decided to do his Science project on the differences
between Spiders and insects. Does anyone out there have any
ideas on how we can make this and interesting project.
Thanks
mom in need of HELP!![/b]

[ahmee]

Hi,

Does he just want to find differences? If he doesn't, then another thing you can do with spiders and insects could be to observe what they do everyday or put them together and see how they interact with each other. Another suggestion would be to make spiders interact with something and then do the same fo the insect and then you can note how their behavior is different from each other.

Hope this helps. =)

[carolinethorn]

Hi Mom in need of help

Some of this is a little dependent on which grade your son is in.

Perhaps you could do a project that is about Classification systems. The most well known classification system for defining animals (and plants) is the Linnaean system. You could do some searches to find out about Linnaeus. He was a biologist who tried to sort animals into different groups based on different features.
You could look at the spiders and the insects and try and come up with a list of your own classifiers that represent the differences between the spiders and insects. Then there are a few different things you could do for the testing part of the experiment depending on your resources
1. see how many of your classifiers match with Linnnaeas' classifiers.
2. build a question answer list. eg. test subject has 6 legs YES/NO, if yes go to question 2. test subject has 2 pairs of wings YES/NO if yes go to question 3. test subject has antennae YeS/NO if YES then test subject = insect.
3.give your son spiders or insects that he hasnt seen before and test which characteristics this animal has and which class it would fit into, and see how many are classified correctly using your question/answer system.
4. More advanced
You could build the question answer list as a simple computer program

good luck
-Caroline

[shoppingdarlin]

Thanks for the helpful information.
My Son is in Grade 5.
They are doing a mini Science fair
so I was wondering how to make
it an interesting display, something
he will be excited to share with
his class mates.
Thanks for any feedback.

[thetrans1ent]

It would also be worthwhile to look into internal bodily functions of spiders compared with insects (e.g., digestion, excretion, etc).