Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
One of Charlotte's daughters pauses, just long enough to answer Wilbur, and announces the young spiders' departure not as a loss but as a calling: 'This is our moment for setting forth.' White dignifies the tiny creatures with the grand word 'aeronauts' and the language of vocation, the 'warm updraft,' the journey out 'into the world,' so that leaving home becomes an act of courage and purpose rather than mere abandonment. Copy the passage and study how a writer's word choice, aeronauts, setting forth, can lift an ordinary event into something noble.
We're leaving here on the warm updraft. This is our moment for setting forth. We are aeronauts and we are going out into the world to make webs for ourselves.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the events of this chapter in order, from Wilbur's homecoming with the egg sac to the three daughters settling in the doorway. When you reach the babies hatching and most of them ballooning away, slow down and explain how Wilbur feels and why.
Discussion Questions
- All winter Wilbur guards Charlotte's egg sac, scooping out a special place and warming it with his breath, and the book says 'nothing in life was so important' to him. Why does this small round sac come to mean more to Wilbur than anything else? Use the details of what Wilbur does to explain your thinking.
- As the babies balloon away, Wilbur is 'frantic' and cries for them to come back, while the little aeronaut calmly explains, 'This is our moment for setting forth.' Why does the very same moment feel like an ending to Wilbur and a beginning to the young spiders? Use the details of what Wilbur and the spiders say to explain your thinking.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Travelers who sail through the air by balloon; the grand word the baby spiders use for themselves as they float away.
Item 2
A formal greeting or 'hello'; the very word Charlotte once used, now spoken by one of her daughters to Wilbur.
Item 3
Talkative and given to chattering; how Wilbur fondly describes the geese in his contented final thoughts.
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Critical Thinking
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