Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Spider Magazine Stories, Games, Activites and Puzzles for Children and Kids

TODAY I TURN eight. That’s right: half of sixteen, two to the third power, sideways infinity. Today whatever I say goes. Grandma is kneeling in the garden when we pull up for the party. She’s cooler than most grandmas. She usually has mud on her jeans and blades of grass in her ponytail. She laughs a lot and calls me “Parsnip,” even though my real name is Parker, because everything is vegetables and flowers for her. Grandpa is the exact opposite of Grandma. He’s like a sack of wrinkly onions. I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but it’s true. He’s that smelly and old and rotten. He sits outside and complains how the air isn’t fresh like in the mountains and how the world is coming to an end. “Don’t…

I thought today was going to be a day of pure delight. Instead, my family ALL forgot my birthday. That’s not right! So now, I plan to hide from Mom somewhere she’d never look, and as for Dad, I’ll slip a dried-up spider in his book! I’ll give my little sis a pass. She’s only three years old. She doesn’t know when I was born, so she is hard to scold. But, worst of all, I never dreamed my brother would forget. How could my twin behave as if we never even met?…

THE NEXT TIME you see a spiral-shaped spider web in your house or garden, keep in mind that it probably took thirty minutes to an hour to make. How do spiders build these delicate wonders? Make this web and find out. What You’ll Need: twigs and leaves (real or artificial)bottle of school glue tracing paper spider and other bug shapes (homemade or purchased) silver glitter (optional) What to Do: 1. Choose four twigs and/or leaves to use as a frame for your web. Glue them onto the tracing paper, leaving enough space between them for your web. 2. A spider starts making its web with strong anchor threads of silk. Draw your anchor threads with the glue nozzle, connecting the twigs and leaves. 3. Next, a spider spins more silk…

OH MY! THE staff here at Spider magazine forgot to get Spider a gift for his birthday! What to do? What to buy? We’ve run to the store to buy something, but we need your help. Select an item from the shopping list that rhymes with each animal or insect in that part of the store. Cross each shopping list item off as you pair it with its rhyming animal or insect name. The one item left on the list will be our birthday present to the best buggy in the whole universe! Shopping List: HOUSEWARES bowldishforkpillowcameratoweltrunkTV TOYS airplanebaseball batblockscaboosedollhousejackstruck CLOTHES capecoatglovehatmittenshoewig Answers to Rhyme -Time Shopping We bought Spider a camera so he can take more pictures for his scrapbook! HOUSEWARES bowl: moledish: fishfork: storkpillow: armadillocamera: NO PAIRtowel: owltrunk:…

YOUR TEACHER ASKS every kid in your class for their birthday. One by one, you hear the days: July 4, April 28, November 19 . . . . What are the chances that two or more kids share a birthday? A year has 365 days, and a birthday can fall on any one of those days. So you might think it’s unlikely you’ll get a match. But it turns out you don’t need a lot of kids to have a pretty good chance of two or more classmates having the same birthday. If your class has 23 or more, it’s more than 50% likely. Why is that? The key is that the chance of a match depends on how many pairs of students there are. Start with three people: you,…

“ARE YOU READY, Rosa?” asked Dad. “Of course. Let’s go!” What a question. I was ready before they even woke up this morning. We all piled in the car and headed for the beach. I carried the cake. Woofie wagged his tail and stuck his head out the window. Abdi, my little brother, only threw up once. (Mama’s baby bag is ready for anything.) The sun was shining and the sky was blue. A perfect start for my perfect birthday. We found a nice place to spread out the beach blanket. I went exploring and found interesting ants. “Red ants!” screamed out Mama, a nanosecond after I discovered that they sting. She rushed me down to the water. I was OK. Abdi fell over trying to follow us. He howled,…