Animals and their Offspring

For my integrated curriculum class, we were required to create a 3 or 5 day lesson to teach during the week of field experience. The following is my unit on Animals and their offspring!! Once completed, I may add my groups thematic unit! This is a Kindergarten Field Placement! My students are planning a trip to one of the local Zoo's in a few weeks, so it was nice to learn about baby animals.

Day 1

ANIMAL'S BABIES LOOK LIKE THEIR PARENTS

On day 1 we discussed how animal babies look like their parents........
To introduce the Lesson, I read:

When finished, I asked the students if the baby animals in the book looked like their parents? We discussed the ways that baby animals looked like their parents, and how we sometimes look like our parents.

Once we discussed several examples of animals looking like their parents, I showed a power point featuring my parents (and myself), and a few baby animals and their parents.

At the end of the lesson, the students got a white piece of paper. On the paper, they had to draw and color a picture of an animal and their baby. Since we discussed that Offspring look like their parents, the students' animals should look alike (except Height, because most of the time baby animals are smaller than their parents).

Here is Mr. Haggard's Example:

Because the Students had to use the same pictures for Day 2, Look forward to their lovely drawings on this day!

DAY 2

_______

On Day 2,  We discussed special names that we give to baby animals and their parents!!

I began by reading Eric Carle's Baby Animals. An interactive book!

This story has the names of [one of the parents] and their baby name. After reading the story, I informed the students that we would only be learning about the baby animals's names, although Adults have names as well.....(due to the fact of a certain "Pet animal's" parent name! [dog]).

I showed the class a power point featuring 23 different animals from 4 different places (Farm,Home,Zoo,Woods).

During Some pictures, we went more in detail.
Examples:
**Cubs---Bear Cubs and Lion Cubs........Baby animals can have the same names, JUST LIKE we have the same name with other people...."There is more than 1 Bob in the world"

**Platypus---Phineous and Ferb reference, and that platypi are actually venomous. Platypus babies are called PUGGLES, like the Awana Program, which has a PUGGLE as their MASCOT.

***A Goose has a LONG neck, while a duck has a SHORT NECK.......The WORD GOOSE makes a LONG SOUND...."G-(EWW)SE, while duck makes a Short sound.

***Depending on your class, you may want to make other examples that relate to THEM.
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AFTER THE POWERPPOINT,
We discussed some of the animals we talked about.......

Then the students had to take their artwork from the previous day, and Label it (I stapled a sticky note to the paper).

Above the Line the students wrote the ANIMAL NAME (ie; DOG) below the line the students write the baby name (ie; PUPPY). If the students drew an animal that WAS NOT in the powerpoint, then I had a "Animal Dictionary" of animals from Enchanted Learning's website.

WE hung the pictures out in the hallway at the end of the lesson for the other Kindergartners to see!! I also added a "header poster" with the GPS on it!

Note:***In the following pictures, some animals names are spelled incorrectly, but this is KINDERGARTEN. they are only working on phonemes (sounds) that they hear!!!!

SEVERAL STUDENTS ALSO DID THE SAME THING.......A lot of students drew Pigs/Piglets like Mr. Haggard (from the previous day)....I did have some students show different creativity though :)!

One of Mr. Haggard's Examples.......of one of our "SPECIAL CASE ANIMALS!!"

Student work:

Monkey--Infant......

.I helped this student a little bit with his drawing, but he did a lot! Way to BE DIFFERENT!!!

DOG---PUPPY!

Shark---Pup!

LOVE THE SURFER!! Extra details make the pictures :)!!

Cat-KITTEN

Love that the Cat and its kitten is in the house, since it is a DOMESTIC type of animal!!!!

Bird/Chicken---CHICK

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES!!!!! You can tell she worked realllly hard! I LOVE THE "ANIMAL SOUND" she included at the top, "TWEET TWEET"!!

                                       The Header with some more student art work!!

 DAY 3

On Day 3, We took what we learned the day before and applied it to an activity.  We pretended that we were on a Safari and visited the places from the previous day! 


To start the lesson,  I incorporated another piece of literature.
"Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?" by; Eric Carle 

Once I read the book, I explained the activity to the students......We were going on a Safari (or train/jeep ride to see animals), each of them would have their own, special envelopes [the envelopes had the students' names on them]. We would be making different stops (Zoo, Farm, Woods, Pets). At each stop there would be an animal who was missing their baby. The babies are in the students' envelopes. The student would then come up to the board, and place their baby with its mama. They would also identify the special name of the baby animal. Before each stop, the students turned their chairs facing the board, and we pretended we were making the "train" move. Mr. Haggard was the conductor of this trip :)! 

The animal parents were pre-glued on 4 different posters. 1 poster for each spot.

here are the pictures of our activity.

Poster Locations: Mr. Haggard's House, Mrs. Davis' Zoo, Mrs. Ross' Farm, Dr. Morris' Woods.

Example of Envelopes: the opposite side had the students' names on it. 

Baby animals added with their parents......in all of the locations.

DAY 4

GUESS WHO, BABY ANIMAL
-On This Day, 
Students played a GUESS WHO animal game. Each student got a turn wearing a BLUE GLITTER  VISOR. During each students turn, the teacher paper clipped an animal to the top of the visor. The teacher walked the students around to each table, for students to give them clues (does it hop, fly, swim, run, etc.... do they have fur, feathers etc....). The student wearing the visor has to guess their animal and/or animal baby name :)! 


The students also completed a worksheet on this day from a pre-k workbook that included matching baby animals to their parents. 

DAY 5

SHOW AND TELL STUFFED ANIMAL.
On this day, the students brought in a stuffed animal or plastic toy, to share with the class. I asked the students numerous questions. What type of animal is it? What does it do? what's its babies name? etc....   If the students didn't bring in a toy, then they were allowed to talk about their favorite animal, or a pet from home :)!!!