Animals and their Habitats

Today we started our Animal Unit by learning about Habitats!

The first places we studied are very COLD habitats....

Antarctica and The Arctic!

After learning about the Top and Bottom of the World, we started learning about the things that live in those places!

We studied penguins and learned quite a few things about them!

The hatch from eggs,

They do not fly, but they swim real fast!

The fathers balance their eggs on their feet until they hatch

and they live in the SOUTHERN part of the Earth!

We practiced balancing eggs on our feet like penguins!

We measured ourselves with different kinds of penguins! We learned that most are smaller than us preschoolers, and only a few are taller than us!

We used our counting skills to match each penguin egg with it's daddy!

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We then spent the next week learning about animals that live in 

the FOREST

 We created our own habitats (that I forgot to take a picture of )
Then we played Bear Cave Math
"How many bears are sleeping in my cave?"
(It's so much fun, they don't even know they are learning to add and subtract!!)

the DESERT
(dang... I didn't take pictures)
We made habitats with poky cactus plants!!

and the JUNGLE
Here's our Jungle Habitats:

 an upside down hand print for our elephant.... So adorable!

We then talked about
AMPHIBIANS and REPTILES 
and compared the two different types of animals!

Cornstarch painting for the amphibians feels moist and soft.
Glitter gives us a nice scaly feel for the reptiles!

We've had so much fun studying animals and their habitats!!

Going on a BUG HUNT.....

Today we did some major BUG EXPLORATION!!

We read some books about where bugs "hide" and we headed outside to find them! We also tried to remember the characteristics of an insect and arachnids as we explored!

We found ALL different kinds of bugs!!!

Bees...

 Roly-Polys!

 Each time we found a new bug, we drew a picture on our "observational drawing" chart!

 Sometimes we liked it when we could feel the bugs tickle our skin like this Roly-Poly!! 

 We gave some of the bugs a temporary home so we could see it a little closer!

 Look what we found under this rock!!! Is that LARVA I see??!! 

(gross, right? The need to spray my yard for bugs grew ten-fold today!!)

 Getting a closer look.....

 We realize this bird is not a bug, however, it was carrying a WORM in it's mouth!!!

(too bad you can't tell from the picture!)

We did some counting activities by putting our "fingerprint bugs" in jars to keep!

We had so much fun exploring the BUG's WORLD today!

Animal Habitats...

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about different ANIMAL HABITATS!

Here are our FOREST ANIMAL HABITATS:

We talked about BEARS too and learned that you should NEVER wake a sleeping bear! What FUN we had learning about the "SH" sound!!

The kiddos had fun playing "Bear Cave Math" where their partners had to "guess" how many bears were sleeping in the cave. Who knew they were adding and subtracting at the same time?!

Our DESERT ANIMAL HABITATS:

Watch out for those sharp cactus plants!! 

We were so lucky to have one of our friends bring in two real LIZARDS on our desert day!!

They were SO much fun to watch!

 JUNGLE ANIMAL HABITATS:

In addition to habitats, we also learned about AMPHIBIANS and REPTILES:

We compared the two with a ven diagram: 

We used corn syrup paint to make the amphibians feel smooth and slimy

and we used glitter to make the reptiles feel dry and rough.