Amazing Animals Part 1: Mammals

Well, we just wrapped up our two-week Animal Unit....and BOY, did we have fun! We started out in week one learning about what a mammal is and their important characteristics (fur or hair, live babies, breathe with lungs, etc.) Once again, I used an AWESOME unit from Deanna Jump about zoo animals. We started off the unit talking about adjectives to describe animals. We read her zoo animal book and then created our own class book. Here are a couple pages from it!

Each students got to pick two adjectives to describe animals and they had to draw an animal for each adjective. These students chose big/little and soft/furry.

We also did four of the seven animal crafts she created throughout the week.

First we did the adorable giraffes and the kids INSISTED that the "baby" giraffes be put up by our "mama" growth chart giraffe. :)

Next up we did lions, zebras and finally monkeys! (At this point I was crafted OUT so we just did the monkey head)

The monkey heads were super fun especially because I had the kids write what they would do if they were a monkey. I said I would have a party in the tress so of course, almost EVERYONE wanted to have a monkey party also. Here are some of my favorites:

If I was a monkey I would make a party with my friends and eat bananas too.

If I was a monkey I would eat a banana and hang on a tree with my friends. I would party up in the tree.

If I was a monkey I would jump up a tree and I would have a party.

After our craft extravaganza we read two books (one on zebras and one on giraffes) and then created a Venn diagram to compare and contrast zebras and giraffes. Our star facts were things we learned about all mammals. I just HAD to decorate the diagram with their cute crafts!

In math we did several animal math problems. My favorite was ordering animals because the kids drew such cute pictures.

I also asked my students to draw 3 mammals in their science journal and to label them. I absolutely LOVE their animal drawings!

This week was all about oviparous animals (animals that lay eggs) but I will blog about that in a few days....I know you can't wait! :)