Animal Classes

This week I am teaching species of animals to my son and their classification. I downloaded from the teachers pay teachers website an activity that separate the animals according to its classes. You can access it by just clicking on this link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Animal-Classes-Reference-Chart.

I needed to double the space of the construction paper to put the printed cards. Thus I glued edges of the two sheets of green construction paper together to make our "Animal Classes" poster. I cut the printed paper on small squares, and separated it according to its classes such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, fish and amphibians.

Afterwards, we started gluing it on our poster, and we began talking about mammals. I explained that when these animals are young and nursed by their mother's milk coupled with being warm blooded. In our poster we have a few examples such as a squirrel, elephant, dog, cow, giraffe and human. However, I also cited other examples like cats, pigs, monkeys and tigers. 

A few months ago we visited a reptile exhibition at the University of Illinois Chicago - UIC - where the children had the opportunity to touch the animals and learn more about them. It was a lot of fun, my son was very brave holding most of the animals, he even held an alligator. Thus, talking about it was easier for my son as he had experienced it before. The examples we have on display are an alligator, chameleon, iguana, turtle, boa constrictor and cobra. 

Thereafter, were the birds. I explained that birds have wings, fly and lay eggs. Parrots, owls, flamingos, eagles, hummingbirds and penguins are a few examples we are using in this category.

The insects were the next class we studied. I explained that all insects have three main body parts: a head, thorax, and abdomen, as well as antennae. We are using examples such as the ladybug, beetle, butterfly, ant, dragonfly, grasshopper. 

He was very excited to talk about the fish as this was his favourite category and he knew most of the animals presented. He told me that these animals live underwater and swim. Our examples are the eel, shark, seahorse, ray, clownfish and goldfish. This week is free admissions the Shed Aquarium - http://www.sheddaquarium.org/ - so I am planning to take him to visit it and learn more in depth about this group. 

We don't have many examples for the amphibians, just the frog, salamander and newt. We talked briefly about this type, I said they live on land and in water, lay eggs and have webbed feet.

The following image shows our poster. As my son is learning to write and read, I also asked him to spell most of the names he learnt today.

I am planning to work each day with an individual category, hence the reason after gluing our poster, we talked more about insects. We worked with an activity that I had printed from the teachers pay teachers website: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Is-It-an-Insect-Emergent-Reader-Freebie. This activity took had a duration time of 30 minutes. It was an easy educational activity that they can do by themselves, whilst you monitor them doing housework. 

If you have any suggestion or activity to recommend, I really appreciate. Thanks :)))!!!!! The poster activity took me about 1 hour to finish. An educational activity that includes science, reading and spelling.