After we finished Botany, we jumped right into the Zoology. I was surprised by how much we managed to cover, diving as deep as the vertebrates/invertebrates! However, we’ll cover them in more detail in the next unit.

We are still using the same PPT presentation about all the things we’ve learned: Introduction to Biology, Botany and Zoology. Vertebrates/invertebrates deserve a separate presentation but in the meantime, let’s get going with the first social mingling in zoology…

Other Categories and how we use these materials.
Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)

• Materials Useful for learning Zoology
• Unit 1 – Introduction to Biology and Zoology

Materials Useful for Learning Zoology

Books: (we are great fans of some series that will follow.  Great books that we fell in love with and don’t belong to any series are listed first)

• Animal Explorers: A Walk in the Jungle – Board book (Apr. 26, 2007) by Dorothea DePrisco
  This is a book and a game: there are puzzle piece animals at the end, that can be inserted in their “homes” – places in the forest/desert/etc throughout the book.  At the end of the book there is also a special folding background that can be used just as a setting to play with the animals.  Really fun and educational.
• http://offers.imponline.com/wildlife-explorer/ – Wildlife Explorer encyclopedia.  Every six weeks arrives a package with three sets of cards about animals.  Large picture of an animal at the front, drawing of animal details at the bottom, information about that animal’s behavior, habitat, young, etc.  Fascinating and really good quality materials.
• Uncover a T-Rex: An Uncover It Book by Dennis Schatz
  There is a whole series of these books: it’s interesting how the insides of the animals are shown and the details about their internal organs/bones/skin, etc.
• Magic Color Skeleton: Amazing Dinosaur Discovery by Shaheen Bilgrami, Treve Tamblin, and Mike Phillips
  The inner pages shows the skeletons of most famous dinosaurs, but if you pull the insert – a reconstructed dinosaur is revealed.  Fun pull in/out pages and seeing how skeleton becomes actual dinosaur.
• DK books, Discoveries series by Barns & Noble, other similar series about specific animals.
• The Magic Schoolbus:
  • The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
  • The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
  • The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive by Joanna Cole, Bruce Degen, and Bruce Degan
  • The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten: A Book About Food Chains by Pat Relf and Carolyn Bracken
  • The Magic School Bus: Butterfly And The Bog Beast, The by Nancy Krulik and Thompson Brothers
  • The Magic School Bus Takes A Dive: A Book About Coral Reefs by Joanna Cole, Ted Enik, and Bruce Degan
  • The Magic School Bus: Gets Ants In Its Pants: A Book About Ants by Joanna Cole, John Speirs, and Bruce
  • The Magic School Bus Hops Home: A Book About Animal Habitats by Pat Relf and Nancy Stevenson
  • The Magic School Bus Gets Cold Feet: A Book About Hot-and Cold-blooded… by Tracey West and Art Ruiz
  • The Magic School Bus Explores the World of Animals by Nancy White, Joanna Cole, John Speirs, and Scholastic Productions
  • The Magic School Bus Going Batty: A Book About Bats by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degan
  • The Magic School Bus Spins A Web: A Book About Spiders by Joanna Cole, Jim Durk, and Bruce Degan
  • The Magic School Bus Goes Upstream: A Book About Salmon Migration by Joanna Cole, Bruce Degan, and Nancy Stevenson

• Rookie Read – I love Allan Fowler books like…  there are far too many to list them all.

• • Animals on the Move (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler
  • Life in a Pond (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler
  • Spiders Are Not Insects (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler
  • Etc.
• Cat in a Hat:
  • Is a Camel a Mammal? (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe and Jim Durk
  • A Whale of a Tale!: All About Porpoises, Dolphins, and Whales (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Bonnie Worth and Aristides Ruiz
  • If I Ran the Rain Forest: All About Tropical Rain Forests (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Bonnie Worth and Aristides Ruiz
  • Miles and Miles of Reptiles: All About Reptiles (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe and Aristides Ruiz
  • Etc.
• Let’s Read and Find out Science Books:
  • Wiggling Worms at Work (Let’s-Read-and-Find… Science 2) by Wendy Pfeffer and Steve Jenkins
  • Again, this is a terrific series and far too many choices to list them all.
• I can read about… series:  yet, too many to list them all.
  • I Can Read About Insects by Deborah Merrians and Kristin Kest

Web:

• http://www.sciencewithme.com
  Excellent animations about an earth worm, about honey bees, some games.  We love that site.  Registration required, but its free and I haven’t noticed any more new junk in the mail.

DVD:

• Magic School Bus: “Hops Home“, “All Dried Up“, “Gets Ants In Its Pants“, “The Busasaurus“, “Going Batty“, “Butterfly and the Bog Beast“, “Cold Feet“, “In a Beehive“, “Spins a Web“, “Goes Upstream“, “Cracks a Yolk“, “Goes To Mussel Beach“, “In The City“, “Takes a Dive“
• We love all of these: they are filled with excellent images, fun info and great songs.
  • National Geographic: Really Wild Animals – Swinging Safari
  • National Geographic – Really Wild Animals: Deep Sea Dive
  • National Geographic: Really Wild Animals – Totally Tropical Rain Forest
• For older kids, this is an absolute favorite by my nephews and nieces:
  • Walking with Dinosaurs
  • Walking with Prehistoric Beasts
  • Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters

Toy list:

• GeoSafari Talking Telescope
  The eye piece feels like a microscope, but it’s large enough and well lit to see the insides really easily. Inside the large body – storage for slides with animals. Once the kid inserts the slide into the telescope (I guess “microscope” would’ve been a more appropriate title for this toy), they see a picture of an animal, or planet in the eye piece and hear some fun facts about it. Kids have to enter the code number of a slide and then either listen the facts, or answer the questions. Looks and feels like a toy, but greatly educational. In our house this one has been a great hit: not only my son loved it, we also lent it to many friends who were anxious to experiment with it by themselves.
• African Animals – 24 pc Floor Puzzle
  This puzzle contains pieces that are rather large and comfortable to handle; colors are bright and pictures of the animals look good.
• Wooden Animal Nesting Blocks
  Sturdy cardboard cubes of different sizes with large clear pictures of animals all over them. This set we started using when my son was just one and a half: at first he just liked nesting the blocks inside each other, later – stacking them. We were looking at pictures, discussing animals, sounds and actions, so in addition to small motor it was aiding his motor skills. Now, at four and a half, we are still using these cubes! Now we use them as a Montessori “pink tower”. Directions: see here – http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/visual-sense-pink-tower.htm. As further extensions to these exercises, memory games could be involved: placing cubes on one matt and carrying them one by one to another matt to build a tower horizontally there. We also tried building a tower with a blindfold – very challenging and fun exercise. So, I am sure we’ll continue using these cubes for a while…

PowerPoint Presentations:

• http://www.childandme.com/encyclopedic-knowledge-animals/
  There are plenty presentations in different languages about different animals AND books that summarize what we are studding, e.g. Introduction to Biology.
• I take special pride of this presentation, since it has fun text, animations and lots of facts about the animals: Sea Creatures with Cat in a Hat
• The Classical Mommy presentations
• The Classical Mommy Friends’ presentations

Units

Unit 1: Introduction to Biology & Botany.

I really liked having these prerequisites: Introduction to Biology, Botany (Unit1) and Anatomy (Bones).  We used the following materials from the WorldWideMontessori class by Karen:

• science of zoology tray (what it studies),
• needs of all living things (air, water, food, reproduction),
• live animal needs (our home pets and its needs),
• scientific names (we expanded this lesson to get a little more of classification – more in our  Introduction To Biology, Zoology, and Botany PPT),
• three part cards of the horse,
• introduction to vertebrates/invertebrates (that’s where our studies of Anatomy-Bones of the Human body came useful – I guess, thanks to that unit, the concept of a spine/no spine was very easy for my young zoologist).

Books:

• Lindie Lobster, A Tale of Big Claws, No. 29 in Suzanne Tate’s Nature Series by Suzanne Tate and James Melvin
  This one and the next we used as stories about invertebrates
• Oozey Octopus: A Tale of a Clever Critter (No. 22 in Suzanne Tate’s Nature Series)by Suzanne Tate
• The Magic School Bus Hops Home: A Book About Animal Habitats by Pat Relf and Nancy Stevenson
  This is more about animal habitats, but we could talk how the bullfrog Bella needs of food, water, air and reproduction were met in her pond.

DVD:

• MagicSchoolBus: Hops Home
• National Geographic: Really Wild Animals – Swinging Safari

Toys:

• We played and sorted the animals from the animal tubes, similar to these: Safari LTD Wild Toob

PPT:

• Introduction To Biology, Zoology, and Botany
  This presentation is a summary of zoology, botany and biology introductory concepts. It has a little on scientific names and taxonomy, but I didn’t include vertebrates/invertebrates – they are really a topic for a separate presentation.

Web:

• http://www.sciencewithme.com: they have a game where you place animals to the continents where they live. We also love a little animation about the Worm Esther.

Hands On Experiments:

1. Sorting animals, identifying their needs
2. Local Aquarium field trip: plenty of vertebrates and invertebrates!