Animals and their Habitats (Part Two)

This is the second part of our habitat lesson.  Click this link for the first part of my post.

Molluscs: The Study of Snails (Part Two)

Materials:

We used the same materials as mentioned in my previous post.  Plus...

Mavi's Journal.  This is a sketchpad turned into journal.  He writes and draw everything he can think of in this pad.

Playdough.  We used PlayDoh for modeling our snails.

The Snail and the Whale.  This is my son's bedside table book which he borrowed from their school library.  Lovely book to read about saving the whale, traveling around the world encountering different animals and their habitats and a great book to teach rhyming words :)

 

Activity 1:  Life cycle of a snail.

I printed this out randomly from the web and discussed this with my son.  We previously had Animal Life Cycles so he's very well familiar on how animals reproduce and survive till their adult life.  Seen on the picture below he volunteered to add labels on the pictures.

Activity 2:  Parts of a Snail

We used our The Snail Definition and 3-Part cards for this activity.  I am a believer of this learning tool / method.  My son has been using nomenclature cards for 3 years and it has accelerated his reading skills, enhances logical thinking (for matching) and knowledge retention.

 

Aside from that, I urged Mavi to record what he has learned in his journal. I want him to keep a journal and learn how to record facts and his daily activities.            

            

Activity 3:  Modeling a snail

We love playdoh and the things that we can do with it!  Here, we try to model a snail using our knowledge of its body parts :)

     

Here's my work (left) and Mavi's work is on the right side.

         

Activity 4: How snails behave.

We watched random videos on Youtube to see how snails behave in a close-up manner.

Most of the activities here are for school-aged children but the nomenclature card is worth a try for preschoolers.  The playdoh modeling was a hit.  I can see how my son reviewed the parts of the snail and seriously applied what he had learned in his snail model.  I was hoping if we could explore more of the other types of Molluscs but I decided not to push through.  I'd like to reserve it for some other time when I have enough materials for it.  For now, snail is good enough.

And that's the conclusion of our Snail study folks! This week we'll be having a new topic for our science but I am still undecided what to tackle.  It's going to rain the whole week so we're stuck at home again and these activities make staying at home exciting LOL.

Thank you for reading!

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Molluscs: The Study of Snails (Part One)

We've been seeing a lot of snails in our place and I just couldn't let this pass :)  So I paid a visit to the library and borrowed a few books about it so we could do a little study on them.  We've never done this before as I am really scared of anything that crawls, but my son was into it and excited so I just have to give in.

Materials:

Books about Snails.  Here I used Slugs and Snails (Minibeast Pets) and Snail (Bug Books). (Affiliates)

Snail Nomenclature Cards and Definition Booklet by The Pinay Homeschooler.  Click the image below for the link as well.

A snail.  We got this tiny fellow in one of our nature walks.

Activity 1:   In search of a snail

Prior to our lesson, we've been reading books and learned about where the snails live and when do they usually come out from their hiding.  So one day, after the rain, we set out to look for a snail that we can bring home.  We followed what the book said: look for snails in dark places, under the rocks, the bushes or if in a surface that is wet or damp.  It was fun looking for them and educational as well.  My son knows exactly where to look for them!

              

 Activity 2: Observing the Snail

Once we have our snail, we put it in a tube (Safari Toob tube LOL) and brought it home for an observation.  My son named the little fellow Sally.  Seen on pictures below, we watched as Sally fed on the leaves, see how she moves and produces a slime to slide.

               

Below we read about the lifecycle of a snail.

 

Activity 3:  Parts of the Snail (Introductory)

At this point in time, we looked at the different parts of the snail.  Mavi was more keen on the body parts as he kept on asking about the eyes of the snail.  We used our snail 3-part cards in identifying the different parts of its body and read our booklet on how each of the parts function.  I like how our nomenclature cards turned out.  Before, I used to draw images but I love that we're using pictures for a more realistic approach.  And at first I kept on questioning the size of our cards but I'm happy that I made it  3.5x4 inches, just enough for everything to be seen.

 

We stopped here.  There were a few more activities left for us to do but I can see that he was already tired.  We will continue this next week as we also study the world of insects.

The study of snail, as I mentioned earlier was something new and the fact that we've been seeing them everywhere helped in building up that eagerness to learn.  He was really curious with this slimy creature and was very attentive in our discussions.  It also helped that we read books about snails beforehand for a head start.

Our snail study did not end here, you can check the second part of our activity here (Molluscs: The Study of Snails Part Two).

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Animal Life Cycles (FREE Learning Material)

We are still continuing our vertebrate study and at this point we are exploring the life cycle of each group.  The aim of this study is to compare the life cycle of each group, to differentiate their development and identify their similarities as well.

Prior to this, I introduced the Animal Kingdom and the Vertebrate group.

To start off, we have The Life Cycle of a Frog for amphibians. Printable materials used here are my Animal Kingdom file, Vertebrate Sorting Cards and the Animal Life Cycles FREE printable.  The link to the file is at the end of this post.

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.

Exploring the Animal Kingdom for Kids

Hello everyone! Mavi is still on a school break this week so we'll be busy doing lots of "home" school activities.  Thank goodness the weather is getting warmer, Mavi gets to play in the yard, digging dirt and "fossils" LOL.

Speaking of which, he's currently obsessed with dinosaurs and with animals in general.  So while he's at it, I took the chance of introducing him to the Animal Kingdom.  I released this file last week so if you want to check it out, just click the image below for the link.

To start with, here's my presentation of the chart.  In my printable file, there are 8 invertebrate animals and I used common animals so kids learning them can easily identify the specific group.  The presentation of the chart to Mavi went smoothly.  He was really surprised that there are animals that doesn't have a backbone. 

As we went along with the presentation, I made him the definition or fact cards that goes along with each of the animal. I made sure that the information I wrote in those cards were interesting enough for a 5 year old :)  We will further discuss Mollusks and Arthropods in the next few weeks for an additional knowledge of their subclass (group types).

 

He learned that some animals can be both a boy and a girl!  And look, we added some animal figures as well and that includes jelly worms!

 

When we reached the Chordates (Vertebrates) he got really excited as this was the part that he's familiar with.

He was so excited because he wanted to put his animal figures under each subclass of the Vertebrate animals LOL.

 

And yes... that includes the dinosaurs!

So classifying animals on what subclass (amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds and fish) they belong to is another activity that we delve into. And that would be on my next post... so stay tuned!

PS.  I was a little bit hesitant to introduce this subject to Mavi.  But I was surprised that he was attentive all throughout our lesson.  He even patiently read all the description cards for me.  I am happy that he was able to grasp the concept immediately, that not all animals are the same, that they are grouped so we can easily identify their features and understand their characteristics and uniqueness. 

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Bird Unit Activities

Son's request was for us to have another bird unit (click here for our previous lessons).  So here are the activities and materials I have gathered for this week's unit study.

Bird Nomenclature and Definition Cards.  Whenever we study animals, I always start by introducing the different parts of the animals and how they function.  I just have to say we've been using 3 part cards method and it has accelerated my son's reading.

Following the nomenclature and definition, my son always works with the activity sheet identifying the parts.  Here he can make his own booklet of bird parts using colored pencils and crayons. 

 

Bird parts booklet.  This method enables my son to practice his spelling and a much deeper understanding of the bird parts.

Bird species matching.  I provided bird pictures in the my Bird Pack which we use to identify the different species of birds. We use our Safari Toob bird collection (and Schleich too).

 

Bird's feet classification.  I made a table of the different types of bird's feet and list down the bird (figures) that we have.  This activity aims to identify the the bird's habitat and lifestyle.

 

Similarly, I printed out a picture of the different shape of the bird's beak from here.  With this activity Mavi will be able to tell what the birds eat.  This activity was inspired by this one.

               

Bird's colors.  Because Mavi loves to color, I collected these images from the web.  The aim of this activity is for Mavi to color the birds based on our figures.

              

The nomenclature cards, definition and bird cards were also from the Bird Pack.  Click the image below for the link.

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Kangaroo Nomenclature Cards

We'll be studying Australia tomorrow and I prepared as a learning aid.  It is now available, just click on the picture below for the link. Hope you like it! Thanks!

For more FREEbies and download, feel free to browse my page The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Whales and Dolphins (with links to FREEbies)

Here's how what we did for the past few days, working on our whales and dolphins theme.

Arts and Crafts

I printed out a pattern of killer whale and humpback whale from LearnCreateLove.com for us to paint.  We could out the different parts and had my son assemble it and add some decors on it.

 

Parts of a Whale

For the parts of a whale, we used our nomenclature card and booklet.

           

I also have a dolphin nomenclature and booklet set if you are interested.

 

           

We love using these cards.  My son loves to compare the parts of the whale to his body parts.  And we love our Safari Toob figures too! They're so detailed that you can even see the blowholes on the figures :)

            

The printable comes with an activity sheet for little ones to color and write a label.

            

Books for reading

Most of these were from the library.  I included a Tagalog book about whales because my son loves learning the Philippine's national language :)

          

Different kinds of whales and dolphins

One of the books has a detailed description of each animal so we used it to learn about the different kinds of whales and dolphins as well as our matching and fact cards. 

          

(Click this picture for the link)

How deep do they dive? 

I came across this wonderful site and downloaded their Teacher's Guide on Whales (for Kindergarten).  The document is a haven of information on whales and dolphins and it got lots of activities for you and your kids to try.  We did How Deep Do They Dive? pages 24-25 of the document.

            

We were able to differentiate which mammal dives deeper using the graph.

           

Whales and dolphins skip counting cards

And finally, you can also work on the skip counting with this cards!  Just click on the picture below for the link.

And that's it for our whales and dolphins! Hope this would help you in case you will try this unit. 

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