Category: Science: Vertebrates – Invertebrates

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Animals and Their Groups Sorting Cards (ages 5-8)

A couple of months ago, I did an animal unit with my youngest.  We went over the characteristics of living and non-living things. Then we talked about vertebrates and invertebrates and finally we went over the five vertebrate groups in quite some detail. I shared the free Montessori cards I made for that part of our unit: the Montessori Vertebrate-Invertebrate cards and the sheets I made on Animals and their Characteristics....

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Animals and Their Characteristics (Free Worksheet)

Animals and their Characteristics – The 5 Animal Groups These free pages are down below! Last week my daughter worked on vertebrates and invertebrates. From there she started working on the 5 animal groups.  I also wanted to go over the characteristics of the various vertebrate animal groups with her. As she sorted the animal groups we talked about some of the characteristics of each group… fish and amphibians lay...

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Montessori Cards: Vertebrates-Invertebrates; 5 Vertebrate Groups

It is animal week for my youngest daughter. We’ve been touching on vertebrates and invertebrates since the kids were little, but I wanted to go back and make sure ED really knew the characteristics of these groups and how animals are classified. First, we went over the difference between Vertebrates and Invertebrates again. We brought out our model frog skeleton again for a closer look! Then she went over the...

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Living-Non Living Montessori Cards

Today I have some free Montessori-style Living and Non-Living Sort Cards for you!  🙂  Use these cards to sort into living and non-living groups. Behind the scenes I’ve been getting things ready for our upcoming science units. ED will be doing a bit of animal classification review and I made some new cards for her. I realized, though, that if any of my readers have younger kids in the 2-4...

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Kindergarten Science – Classifying Animals

Last week, ED spent some time learning about the different animal groups — mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. We talked about some of the different characteristics of each group and she spent time separating them into the different categories. We have a number of different activities and she spent several days going through our various activities: One was from a book called Take It to Your Seat Science Centers and...

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World Animals — The Amazing Independent Work the Kids are Doing!

One of the wonderful things that has been happening here at the Homeschool Den is the amount of independent work the kids have been doing.  DD is always asking to learn more about animals so at the beginning of the semester, I downloaded Erica’s wonderful Expedition Earth: Discovering God’s Animals over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. It is a free animal unit study.  Erica has made animal mini-books for close to...

Where Do Things Come From 4

Farm Animals (Montessori Activities and More)

After our study of earthworms and flatworms, we went back to talking about vertebrates.  One day last week, we learned a bit more about domesticated animals. We talked about some pretty fascinating things with DD and LD. Can you guess out of the millions of animal species how many large animals have been successfully domesticated? I’ll tell you in just a minute below! For ED we pulled in a few Montessori...

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Hands-On Invertebrate Fun! (Part 2 – Amazing Planarian)

Planarian are a type of small flatworm. My homeschooling friend had some Planarian she had ordered and shared some with us! What a great friend to share her worms! 🙂 Heh heh! Let me first share a picture of these little creatures and then I tell you some really cool things about them!! Planarian are amazing because they have the ability to regenerate! If you cut a Planarian in half...

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Hands-on Invertebrate Fun! (Part 1 – Earthworms)

Once we went over the classification of animals (I shared that post and our Montessori Activities here), we got into the exciting hands-on stuff!  We looked at earthworms and a type of flatworm called Planarian. There are some interesting differences in their body systems so we spent time comparing the two. Our first step was to go out to the garden and find ourselves some earthworms.  It was chilly out...

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Meet Vertebrae-Man — Our Hands-on Explorations of the Backbone and Nervous System!

Continuing on with our vertebrate-invertebrate unit… One day last week we learned a bit about the backbone and nervous system. We talked about the importance and function of the vertebrae and did some activities to explore how/why the vertebrae work. The kids liked this almost as much as they liked Harold (when we did the circulatory system)!  Here’s a picture of vertebrae man–then I’ll explain what we did… I made...

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Invertebrate-Vertebrate Unit Study – Montessori Activities

Homeschooling is so great because you can be flexible and go with the flow when the need arises! We were all prepared to start school with a unit on rocks when my wonderful homeschooling friend offered to give us some flatworms called Planarian. Her family had studied them and their amazing properties.  We jumped at the chance to do something new and delved into a week-long study of invertebrates. It...

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Preschool Science: Living, Nonliving

We’ve been having a discussion of what makes something living. Living things eat drink (need water) breathe grow reproduce We’ve been observing mealworms for the past couple weeks.  We saw evidence of their growth because they shed their exoskeleton. Yesterday we noticed they had transformed completely into darkling beetles! We’ve been keeping track of the growth of three sunflower plants out in the garden. Our sunflowers have grown an inch...

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A Great Science Activity: Working with Mealworms

The science curriculum I’m using this year suggests letting the kids observe and work with mealworms. This is part of our discussion of what makes something living or not living.  I purchased some from a local pet shop and came up with a few activities for the kids to do as they observe and learn about their mealworms. Before I even uttered a word, I simply handed the kids their...

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Vertebrates-Invertebrates — and Frogs!

Last week we spent quite a bit of time outside enjoying the wildlife in our yard.  We are really lucky in that we see a wide variety of critters every day.  We spotted a little Northern Brown Snake, a small mouse that was in the strawberry garden (corralled briefly in an empty pot and then released) and a toad.   We also came across a large millipede (probably four inches or...