Off to the Serengeti!

We are doing an animal study, loosely based on Winter Promise's Animals and Their Worlds.  I bought the teacher's guide and a few books and doodads, but mostly we're using the public library and our own library.

 

Here's what we've got going. 

 

Last week we read from the Usborne World of Animals.  We basically whizzed through the first 32 pages which cover animal basics like carnivore/herbivore, camoflauge, hibernation, the animal kingdom, animal instincts, homes, migration...all those cool animal buzz-words one should be familiar with.  For the most part, the girls were.

 

We are reading about habitats, which is how WP's program is organized, so we read in Animal Habitats.

 

Two fun books we are using for drawing are Draw Write Now Book 8 and Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals.

 

We'll also be using several books to explore the habitats in greater depth.  One is Usborne Book of World Wildlife (I'm kind of an Usborne junkie--we own a lot of Usborne!) and the other is One Small Square: African Savanna.

 

Last week we put together some notebook pages on habitats using cool pictures from Evan-Moor's Giant Science Resource Book.  (I love Evan-Moor's website.  They have a nifty viewer that lets you look at every single page in most of their books before you buy it!  And their materials are pretty neat, too!)

 

Some online habitat games

Make your own habitat to keep the animal happy and healthy

Habitats Quiz  -- a little hard!

 

This week we are beginning a study of the grasslands, particularly African Savannas.  We'll focus on the lion as our animal of the week.  Today we read about the lion from Marvels of Creation: Magnificent Mammals.

 

I've also found a bunch of fun links on the web for the African Savanna.

National Geographic Kids Creature Feature: Lions

National Geographic Kids Lion Coloring Page

National Geographic Kids African Safari Game

Solve a photo jigsaw puzzle of savanna animals

 

For Younger Kids:  Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies

Fun Safari Game (this is really CUTE!)

Watch full episode videos of this show online and a bunch more of them here

 

Oh, and I bought my kids a Toob.  They had fun getting out our other animal figures and having all the lions attack all the grass-eaters.  The lions were very full!  Our light green braided rug made a great savanna because it was a) flat and b) open.  The couch was open but not flat.  Under the couch was flat but not open.  The kids set up a water hole and a few trees and bushes for the browsers.

 

And I forgot to take pictures.

 

Happy Safari!