Confession: my children know way more about animals than I do. It’s embarrassing really. The first time we took our oldest to the zoo, she proudly proclaimed, “Oh! There are the Okapis! Those are my favorites!” We had no clue what this little pint size zoologist was talking about, but we quickly learned all about the creepy half zebra-half donkey looking creatures.
The point is, they love animals. They will watch any educational, documentary type show about animals they can get their hands on. J is constantly rattling off random animal facts and our last zoo trip lasted well over 6 hours thanks to her needing to read every sign, talk to every zoo keeper and study every animal/bug/exhibit. Whew! It was a doozy.
So, naturally, when we made the switch to unit studies as opposed to a “regular” curriculum, I decided to dive right into the world of animals! I typed up a very flexible scope and sequence type plan for the year, starting with BIRDS! Our goal is to spend about 2 weeks in each unit and end each unit with a special project for each one of them.
We just completed our bird unit, and I wanted to share it with you here. What I did is spend about 2 hours scouring the internet and piecing together the study. We also checked out a ton of library books so that the kids could reference those when they wanted.
Day 1: Birds & Beaks
Cut out the cards (separate the birds from the beak descriptions) – glue matching pieces together on a poster
For older kids, have them fill out this chart.
Day 2: Bird Anatomy
Short video about bird anatomy.
Colored and filled out this worksheet.
Day 3: Owl Lapbook
We took about 3 days to finish this lapbook – we had so much fun!
Day 4: Owl Lapbook
Day 5: Owl Lapbook
Day 6: Fun Bird Worksheets
Day 7: Hummingbird Lapbook
Again, it took us about 3 days to complete this lapbook, we used some pretty cool videos from YouTube!
Day 8: Hummingbird Lapbook
Day 9: Hummingbird Lapbook
Day 10: FINAL PROJECTS!
1st grade: Mini bird dictionary
4th Grade: Bird Research Project – Mobile
That’s it! There are a lot of things that we didn’t cover, which you could add on to make the unit study longer.
- Add another lapbook about a different kind of bird
- Bird Diets & eat-like-a-bird projects
- Migration (although we did talk about hummingbird migration)
I hope this is helpful! Here are some pictures of our unit!
Our next unit is on Halloween and Fall!