Habitats

We're studying biology this year. I've been planning our course since midway through last year. All the sudden it hit me though--the outline I had read (and loved), from The Well Trained Mind, left out a few topics I wanted to cover. Some of it can be easily worked in, other things not so much. Kate isn't as gaa gaa over animals as some children are, so it isn't difficult to shorten that study (which is supposed to last 20 weeks) by a couple of weeks to add in some other biology topics. We are starting with a unit study on habitats. I plan to teach various habitats now and then she will relate that to those animals later when we get to them.

Our unit study is in depth and costly...just kidding. I have several books I picked up at the library (The Usborne Book of Wild Places, EyeWitness Science: Ecology, The World Wildlife Fund: Living Planet, and Animal Habitats [by Judy Press]). Just about any book on habitats for children would probably work. The World Wildlife one isn't for kids, but is mostly pictures.


We read about a habitat, looked at pictures, and I tortured the child by making her draw her answer.


She loves to draw, plus I get to see that she gets it. She was facinated by the carnivorous plants...here is a pitcher plant eating a bug on the right (on the left is a parrot). And in case you didn't know this about rainforests, she tells us, "They are really wet."


I have her draw a picture of the habitat, write one sentence to describe it, and then draw a picture of one animal and one plant that she could find there. She describes wetlands with the sentence, "They have lots of water," and she illustrates a snake and cattails.


I even had her draw a picture of her habitat (our house). Excuse the blocked out portions, but I didn't really want the whole internet to have our home address! There are steps, a flower bed and a lot of windows above the door.


I then bound her pages together to make a book of habitats to have on hand that she can look at as she goes through the animals later.

The Animal Habitats book is the book I've leaned on most heavily. I have really enjoyed the art activities. We haven't done anywhere near all of them (not by my daughter's choice!), but they have been fun and fit right in with the lesson. I would recommend seeking it out if you can.