Activity Plan 4-5: Who Works With Animals?

Children will learn about the kinds of places where animals live

• PRINT
• EMAIL

Ready-To-Use Teaching Ideas: Art

Materials:

• colored tissue paper
• 7"x10" tag board
• construction paper
• kraft paper
• glue
• markers
• child safety scissors
• colored construction paper

Developing Skills:

• science concepts
• critical thinking
• observation
• language
• mapping

In Advance:

In your library area, provide resources such as nature magazines, books, posters, and old animal calendars. Also display and have available lots of animal puppets, stuffed toys, and animal replicas. Let children bring in favorite stuffed animals from home.

ACTIVITY

Define the word habitat for children and write this definition on chart paper. Engage children in a discussion about all the places animals live and record their responses on the paper.

Ask children to choose an animal and to describe what type of habitat the animal lives in. Once everyone has chosen their animals, put them in habitat groups.

Pass out a piece of tagboard to each group, and make colored tissue paper available to everyone. Explain to each group of children that they are going to get a chance to create a picture of the habitat their animals live in, and that they will add their animals to the picture later. Show them how to create the habitat by tearing and overlapping the colored tissue paper.

Give children a sheet of construction paper and encourage them to draw and cut out the animal they chose. Remind them to think of the size of the habitat they made. How big should the animal be? Model the proper size for them.

Ask children to glue their animal onto their created habitat, and then glue these habitat pictures onto a large sheet of kraft paper to use as a frame for their work.

Remember: Children will need a lot of visual clues and time to talk about habitats. You'll need to point out the details of each habitat.

TAKE-HOME ACTIVITY

Puppet Performers Send a letter home informing parents about the unit you are working on. Ask them to talk with their children about the animals. Parents can create an animal puppet with their child and put on a short performance for other family members.

Curriculum Connection: MATH

How Animals Measure Up Help children find out the length of the animal they chose. Is the animal smaller or larger than they are? Ask them to measure out the length of the animal with a yardstick. Then cut a piece of yarn that length and let children use it to measure their feet or hands. Ask: How many hands (feet) tall is your animal?

Risa Young is the former director of two early childhood programs in the New York City area, the Children's Aid Society's Greenwich Village Center and the Innovative Learning Center at the Long Island College Hospital. She has been a consultant to Early Childhood Today for more than eight years.

Robin Smith teaches K-1 at Chilmark School on Martha's Vineyard, MA. Her school has 58 children, grades K-5. 

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