Classifying Animals

For science, we had a first grade science book that covered such topics as plants, animals, bugs, seasons, weather, simple machines, and space. Each topic came with a worksheet or two and a few ideas to expand the lessons. So each topic could possibly take about a week or two.

However, we are doing more of an unschooling approach, and I only used this curriculum as a jump board to dig more deeply into a topic. I liked the worksheets, and so did the girls. So, to supplement, I used a lot of ideas from the Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out series, which contains activities for ages 4 to 7 (although my 3 year old enjoyed the activities too).

When we got to the part on animals, my 1st grade science curriculum taught how to identify mammals, and that was about it. So I found these wonderful science story books that describe each animal group. The books are easy for a young child to read and understand, pinpointing the specific physical characteristics that identify an animal as being part of a specific group. For example, the book on amphibians describes the cool, moist skin and the stages of life as well as several other aspects that all amphibians share.

We would read one of the books, and then I would follow that up with a poster board project. I bought a used school book from Half-Price Books that contains tons of real life pictures of animals. We would cut out the pictures from whichever animal group that we were working on and paste them on our poster board. Then I would write some comments like "baby amphibians breathe under water with gills" and "adult amphibians breathe air with their lungs" and "amphibians have cool, moist skin."

Added to this activity, we raised tadpoles last summer, and we got to watch as one slowly lost his tail and eventually jumped out of the water. R used to carry around imaginary baby puppies, and she would say that her imaginary puppies were so little that they did not have their legs yet.

We also raised some crawdads, and it was cool to see when one of them shed his skin. Before shedding his skin, Houdini (he kept trying to escape) had only one claw as the other was broken, and one of his antennae was also broken. After molting, both the claw and the antennae were restored but were just a little smaller.

We also captured a caterpillar, watched it grow and make its cocoon, and we kept a bug house for crickets . With all of these hands on activities to supplement the science curriculum, the girls really learned a lot about different types of animals.

One day, M made the comment that turtles are reptiles, and my husband TJ (a science major in college, by the way) was not so sure, thinking that they might be amphibians. Nope, they are reptiles as they lay their eggs in the sand and the babies hatch fully formed, and they have scaly skin rather than cool, moist skin.