Introducing Vertebrate Animals to Kids

Mavi was very excited when I told him that we'll be sorting out animals according to their classification.  This was his long awaited activity and he was so happy that we get to finally do it (my cards were completed).

So after our talk about the Animal Kingdom and how the classification of the Vertebrate animals differ, I gave him our Vertebrate Sorting Cards to classify each of the animals in the cards based on their group.  First, we read each definition card of each group to know more about the features of their members. Then he sorted his Safari TOOB Animals and Schleich Animals according to their groups.

This was an activity that he enjoyed the most.  Now my observation is that he gets confused at times between reptiles and amphibians. So what I did was to talk more about their differences.  We watched videos of frogs, snakes, iguanas and chameleons so he can understand why these confusing animals belong to amphibians or reptiles.

If you do not have your own animal figures the "Montessori Vertebrate Sorting Activity Cards" learning pack includes real pictures of animals which you can use for your sorting activity.  To learn more about the learning pack you can check out this post, "The Animal Kingdom and Vertebrate Sorting Cards".

We did this activity a couple of times as he really really likes sorting them.  In the pictures below we both used our animal figures and the animal cards of the learning material.

Then he worked on this activity again only using his animal figures.

This is one great activity for a child who develops a love for animals or who is in a stage where he/she is obsessed with animals even say dinosaurs like my Mavi. 

For the materials that were used in this activity we have:

Montessori Vertebrate Sorting Activity Cards

Safari Toobs animals figures (reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians and mammals):

• Reptiles (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK)
• Fish (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK)
• Birds (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK)
• Amphibians (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK)
• Mammals (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK)
• Schleich for the Dinosaur (Amazon US)  (Amazon UK) 

The next activity will be learning the life cycles of these animals according to their groups.