Theme: North American Animals
Unit study on animals of North America.
- Overview
- North American Animals Theme Introduction
- Beavers
- Bison
- Caribou
- Chipmunks
- Coyotes
- Deer, Part 1
- Deer, Part 2
- Groundhogs
- Hedgehogs
- Moose
- Opossums
- Raccoons
- Skunks
- Squirrels, Part 1
- Squirrels, Part 2
- Turkeys
- Wolves
- North American Animals Theme Recap
Overview
For the Bookshelf
"Biorachan Beag agus Biorachan Mór" - Pardee Family Library, softcover
"First 100 Nature Words" - Pardee Family Library, hardcover
"Where is Peter Rabbit?" - Pardee Family Library, hardcover
For the Toy Shelves
Outings
Visit Seven Lakes Park to go animal spotting.
North American Animals Theme Introduction
Activity 1
Make an animal tape rescue using the animals in this theme, sticky taped to a baking tray. Once rescued, match them to picture cards, learn their names, and brainstorm what they have in common.
Curriculum areas: E10a
Activity 2
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Lunch Snack
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Activity 3
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Activity 4
Beavers
Introductory Facts
Beavers are the second-largest rodents in the world, growing 3-4 feet or 1 metre long - about the same age as a preschool-aged child! They have double eyelids and are very short-sighted. The double eyelids function like swimming goggles.
Activity 1
Did you know that beaver tail shapes are a family trait? Print the Beaver Tail Shape Match page in the attachments. Find an object for each shape from your toys or around the house and place it on the correct beaver.
Curriculum areas: M05b, E10b
Activity 2
Watch the 9-minute BBC Earth video "Beaver Lodge Construction Squad". See if you can build a dam to stop water! Use a slippery-dip or driveway gutter to be the river and use sticks and mud to build the dam just like beavers do.
Curriculum areas: M08a, M08b, E02a, E02c
Lunch Snack
Beavers have long orange front teeth which grow throughout their lives and can cut through a branch the size of a finger in a single bite. Make tortilla or flatbread "logs" by choosing brown fillings such as sliced meat or peanut butter and rolling them up, and serve it with a side of carrot sticks.
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13c
Activity 3
Make a paper plate beaver face.
Curriculum areas: M06b
Activity 4
Make beaver tail pastries for afternoon tea.
Bison
Introductory Facts
Watch a four-minute video "Meet the American Bison!" or a ten-minute video "Bison of the West". Bison are also called "buffalo", but they're not the same species as water buffalo in Asia.
Activity 1
Bison, or buffalo, are mentioned in the first verse of "Home on the range". Practice singing it.
Curriculum areas: X02a, X02b
Activity 2
Buffalo graze, and eat grass, shrubs, and twigs. In winter, they can eat grass buried under up to four feet of snow. Hide objects under pillows and blankets and practice finding them just by feeling.
Curriculum areas: S12a
Lunch Snack
Make "buffalo food" for lunch:
For the salad:
- 1 cucumber
- 1/2 green bell pepper
- 1 cup curly parsley
- 1/4 cup scallions or chives
For the dressing:
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp mined garlic
Finely chop the salad greens and then toss them together with the dressing. Cook quinoa or bulgur for the soil and add the green salad over the top for the grass. Serve with pieces of beef on top for the buffalo.
Curriculum areas: S13c, R09b
Activity 3
Buffalo like to roll around in the dirt to keep themselves cool. Print the Buffalo Template page in the attachments. Paint the buffalo with dirt paint: collect some dirt and sieve it so there's no large pieces (or use coffee grounds), and then mix equal parts dirt, PVA glue, and water until its the consistency of yoghourt. Don't paint the horns, but cut them out and attach them after, and use a piece of brown string or yarn for the tail.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, M08e
Caribou
Introductory Facts
Caribou are also called reindeer. Watch the 2-minute video "Learn Facts about Reindeer". Reindeer are furry all over, including their nose and their hooves, and two different sorts of hair, with soft wool near the skin and long, hollow hairs on top which help them float if they need to swim across a river. They can swim 6-10kmph (4-6mph).
Activity 1
Caribou are the only domesticated deer species. People in the arctic use them like horses, for pulling sleds and carrying loads. See if you have what it takes to be a highly-trained reindeer!
Trotting: Practice galloping around the room, making sure your knees are high. Move on to skipping if you can.
Balance: Put a narrow plank or a piece of tape on the floor and practice walking along it
Sled pull: Fill a basket with doll and teddy bears and tie a rope around one end for a harness to pull across the room. Be careful so your passengers don't topple over or fall off!
Curriculum areas: S05a, S05b, S06a, S06c
Activity 2
Spread rice on a baking tray and use a finger, straw, pencil, etc to make sled tracks in the "snow": lines, waves, zig-zags, and letters.
Instead of rice, you could make fake snow out of 1 cup baking soda and 1/5 cup white conditioner, or use shaving foam.
Curriculum areas: L08a, L11a, L11c
Lunch Snack
Reindeer eat lichen, herbs, ferns, hay, beet pulp, and alfalfa. Make a beetroot salad for lunch.
For the salad:
- 1 can of chopped beetroot
- 1/2 red onion, thinly-sliced
- 1/2 cup of bean sprouts or alfalfa
- 1/2 cup chopped parsley, mint, dill, and chives
- 1/4 cup walnuts or pinenuts
- 1/2 cup feta cheese
For the dressing:
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp crushed garlic
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- pinch of salt
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13c
Activity 3
Glue together a rectangular carton and a paper cup to make a caribou head and body. Wrap brown yarn around them, as well as four sticks or pop-sticks to be the legs. Use velvety brown pipecleaners to make tall antlers.
Curriculum areas: M06b
Chipmunks
Introductory Facts
Watch a four-minute video: "Discover Chipmunk Burrows".
Activity 1
Chipmunks hibernate over winter. Sing some of the hibernation songs.
Curriculum areas: X02a, X02c, S07a, S05b
Activity 2
Print and construct the chipmunk preposition dice in the attachments. Using a chipmunk figurine and props from the garden, roll the dice and move the chipmunk to those places, saying the prepositional phrase.
Curriculum areas: L01c, S08a, S08c, M05c
Lunch Snack
Chipmunks are opportunistic omnivores, and eat seeds, nuts, berries, fruits, flowers, and mushrooms as well as insects, worms, snails, frogs, eggs, and small birds. Make "acorns" to eat with boiled eggs and mushroom hats, and serve with grape tomato "tulips".
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13c
Activity 3
Make a chipmunk in a burrow paper plate craft.
Curriculum areas: M06b
Coyotes
Introductory Facts
Coyotes are omnivorous mammals, and eat mice, voles, rabbits, insects, fish, frogs, snakes, and lizards, as well as grasses and nuts. The name comes from the Aztec word "coyotl", and they are found everywhere in North America.
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Lunch Snack
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Activity 4
Deer, Part 1
Introductory Facts
Watch the 5-minute video "Interesting Facts about Deer". Try to recall a time you've seen a deer.
Deer are mentioned in the first verse of "Home on the range", as well as the chorus. Review it (from the bison session) and practice singing it.
Curriculum areas: X02a, X02b
Activity 1
Deer can run up to 30 miles and hour and jump as high as 10 feet (3 metres). Practice jumping as high as you can! Deer and especially fawns leap when they're running away. Do your best imitation of a leaping deer, and practice skipping, which is a similar motion to leaping but for humans.
Curriculum areas: S06e, S06c, S06a
Activity 2
While you're out and about practicing your leaping and skipping, have a look for pinecones, acorns, leaves, even small tree branches that look like deer antlers! Feel the different leaves, textures, and materials. See if you can spot deer tracks.
Curriculum areas: E03a, E03b
Lunch Snack
Deer eat fruit, nuts, acorns, and grass. Make a fruit salad, or eat a platter of dried fruit and nuts, or boil some grains and top it with fruit and nuts.
Curriculum areas: S13b, S13c
Activity 3
Make a paper plate sleeping deer. Print the deer template in the attachments (head and tail) as well as the back of paper plate. Cut a slit along the radius of the paper plate and staple it into a low cone, then attach the head and tail. You can paint it using a cotton ball on a peg for the brown and a q-tip for the white, and add cotton balls for the fluff on the tail.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, M08e
Deer, Part 2
Introductory Facts
Watch the 3-minute video "Nine Deer and Me" (or read the book if you have it). A deer community is called a herd, and they can live in herds of up to one hundred thousand.
Deer are mentioned in the first verse of "Home on the range", as well as the chorus. Review it (from the bison session) and practice singing it.
Curriculum areas: X02a, X02b
Activity 1
Deer antlers grow faster than anything else on the planet! See how fast and how tall you can stack blocks. Keep a record of how many minutes/seconds before the block tower falls down, how many blocks there were, and how tall it was, and then make a graph of it.
Curriculum areas: L10c, M08f, E08b
Activity 2
Pretend your hands are deer antlers, holding them up to your head with the thumbs above your ears. Each little spoke on the antler is called a tine - do you want one, two, three, or four tines on your antlers? Pick a different number for each hand and see how many you have in total. Then pick new numbers of tines.
Curriculum areas: M01a, M01b, M01d
Lunch Snack
Find some venison to try! Or make flatbread or celery deer heads.
Curriculum areas: S13b, S13c
Activity 3
Watch the 7-minute video "Drawing St. Godric's Deer" and draw a deer!
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, L11c
Groundhogs
Introductory Facts
Groundhogs are also called "woodchucks". Practice saying the tongue-twister "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
Curriculum area: L01a
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Lunch Snack
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13c
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Activity 4
Hedgehogs
Introductory Facts
Watch the one-minute video (in Gaelic), "Còig Criomagan Gràineagan"
Activity 1
Hedgehogs are 5-12 inches (12-30cm) long, with a coat of sharp spines, and will curl into a ball when they feel threatened. The spines are made out of keratin, which also makes hair and nails. Use playdough to form balls, and stick toothpick spines into them.
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Activity 2
Hedgehogs hibernate, and are nocturnal. Darken a room by turning off the lights and closing the windows, and practice moving around in the dark. Hide wooden eggs around the darkened room to find.
Curriculum areas: S05a, S05b, S07a
Lunch Snack
Hedgehogs are carnivores and eat bugs and eggs, but they're lactose intolerant. Make "spider eggs" for lunch used halved hard-boiled eggs, topped with an olive and strips of carrot for the legs. Make sure not to use milk!
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13c
Activity 3
Watch the four-minute video: "Dèan Fhèin E: Gràineag", and then make a paper hedgehog.
Curriculum areas: M08e
Moose
Introductory Facts
Watch a two-minute video, "Moose Facts for Kids".
Activity 1
Moose are 10 feet (3 metres) long and 7 feet (2 metres) tall. Their antlers can be 6 feet (180cm) across. Measure this out on the floor, and measure it in terms of different units: child's height, child's feet, parent's feet, et cetera.
Curriculum areas: M02b
Activity 2
Make a set of fake moose antlers with a 1m-long dowel and empty (or slightly filled with rice, beans, pebbles, et cetera) bottles on each end. Hold it on your head sticking out to each side and try to walk around, get through doors, and so on, without knocking things over.
Curriculum areas: S05a, S05b, S07a
Lunch Snack
Moose eat mainly leaves, tree bark, and nuts. Make a cinnamon nut salad for lunch.
For the salad:
- 3 apples, diced
- 1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
- 3 cups chopped greens (spring mix, kale, etc)
- 1/2 cup cooked quinoa
For the dressing:
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise (or substitute 2 tbsp tahini, 1 tbsp mustard, and 1 tbsp olive oil)
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp lemon or orange juice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
Mix the salad ingredients together and then mix up the dressing and pour it over.
Curriculum areas: S13c, R09b
Activity 3
Print the moose template in the attachments. Because moose eat leaves and tree bark, paint it using tea bags, and cinnamon mixed with a little PVA glue and water. Cut out handprints on white or cream paper to attach as the antlers once the moose is try.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, M08e
Opossums
Introductory Facts
Watch the four-minute video "Opossums".
Activity 1
When they feel threatened, opossums flop onto their sides and pretend to be dead until they have an opportunity to escape. That's called "playing possum". Play musical opossums (statues) and freeze when the music stops!
Curriculum areas: S06a, S06b, S06c, S06e, X02c
Activity 2
Opossums are great at climbing trees by digging into their bark with their long claws. They also hang from the branches by just their tails! Just like coathangers. Practice hanging up coathangers.
For an older child, take pipecleaners and practice wrapping one end once or twice around the coathanger - does it stay on when you shake the coathanger like the wind? What about if you thread some beads onto the long end of the pipecleaner to make it heavier?
Curriculum areas: M08a, M08b, M08d
Lunch Snack
Opossums are marsupials, which means they have pouches where their babies live. They are also omnivorous scavengers, and eat anything they can find - mice, insect, birds, worms, snakes, chickens, troadkill, things found in garbage cans and dumpsters, you name it.
For lunch, fill a pita pocket with as many different sorts or colours of food as you can. Or, for a treat, go and get shawarma.
Curriculum areas: S13a, S13b, S13c
Activity 3
Make a toilet roll opossum. Paint the toilet roll grey, and add a white cone on one end for the face, black ears and legs. Cut a slit halfway across it halfway down. Punch two holes in the opposite end to the face and push through a black pipecleaner, pulling it tight and twisting it into a tail to seal up that end. The slit should open up to the inside of the toilet roll, like a pouch.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, M08c
Activity 4
Opossums give birth to up to 20 live babies at a time, but they are very tiny and they have to crawl into the mother's pouch to keep growing for a while before they can move outside. Use some dry red kidney beans and practice using tweezers to move them into the pouch. Roll a die or two to decide the number. Roll again to find a number of grey pom-poms to stick on the opossum's back, to represent the joeys when they are a bit older.
Curriculum areas: M01a, M01b, M02b
Raccoons
Introductory Facts
Watch a two-minute video, "Amazing Animals: Raccoon".
Activity 1
Raccoons are called "wash bears" in most languages, because they wash their food. Wash your plastic toy animals! Fill a large container with some manner of brown gunk (chocolate cake mix; chocolate pudding; oobleck with brown food colouring; cocoa powder mixed with flour and water; etc) and the animals in it. In a bowl put water, a little soap, and toothbrushes. Have the child fish out the animals from the brown gunk and wash them in the bowl.
Curriculum areas: S11a
Activity 2
Raccoons have dens in tree holes, logs, and attics, and they spend the first two months of their lives there. In autumn, they gorge on food and then sleep all winder in their dens. Using the tree and the patterning strips in the attachments, stack food* in a pattern up the tree-trunk to help the raccoon reach its den.
*either print extra of the patterning strips and cut out the food items, or use play food. If using play food, you may need to print the tree in a larger size.
Curriculum areas: M03a
Lunch Snack
Raccoons are omnivores, and eat insects, mice, fish, eggs, and trash, so you can find them in all sorts of settings including the city. Eat leftovers for lunch.
Activity 3
Tear and glue newspaper and black paper onto the raccoon craft template (in attachments), then cut out the template pieces and stick together.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c
Skunks
Introductory Facts
Skunks make a sulphur-like smell which they spray from glands near their bum when they feel threatened. Prep the sulphur egg activity by very carefully poking holes in the shell of an egg with a pin (use a hardboiled egg if the child is going to be poking the holes). Put it in an al-foil nest in a sunny spot for the day.
Watch a two-minute video: "Meet a Skunk"
Activity 1
Skunks nest in burrows and logs. Build a blanket fort.
Curriculum areas: E02b, E02c
Activity 2
Different species of skunk have different black and white spots and stripes on their back. Print the skunk cards in the attachments. There are several activities to do with them:
- match upper and lowercase letters
- match shapes that are the same but rotated or sized different
- use fridge magnets to match letters - use just uppercase or just lowercase
- trace the letters using finger, objects, whiteboard marker, etc
Curriculum areas: L08a, L11a
Lunch Snack
Skunks are omnivores and eat a varied diet including fruits, plants, larvae, worms, eggs, and fish. Make a snack plate with hardboiled eggs, (cooked) fish sticks, spirali or hotdogs cut into little strips before boiling them (to look like worms), and fruit.
Curriculum areas: S13b
Activity 3
Watch a five-minute video "Skunk facts: not always stinky!"
We return to the concept of skunk stink, and make our second sulphur activity. Cut the heads off about a dozen matches and put them in an empty spice container. Add a few teaspoons of household ammonia. Compare the smells of each one.
Rub the smell of the sulphur on four scraps of cloth. Then treat one with tomato juice, one with baking soda and water, one with shampoo, and one with hydrogen peroxide. See which one removes the smell the most. Is it still the same answer after an hour?
NOTE: the adult should be the one handling the ammonia and the peroxide!
Curriculum areas: S12a, S13d
Activity 4
Make a paper plate skunk. Use half the paper plate for the body, a quarter for the head, and the rest for ears and tail. Paint it all black and glue cotton balls on for the stripes.
Curriculum areas: M06b, M06c, M08c, M08e
Squirrels, Part 1
Introductory Facts
Watch a one-minute video, "Fun Facts for Kids about Squirrels", and a four-minute video, "How Do Squirrels Find the Food they Hide?"
Activity 1
Go out and collect acorns, leaves, and twigs.
Curriculum areas: E03a, E03b, S07b, R09b
Activity 2
Using your acorn collection from before, or various nuts if you weren't able to find anything:
- sort and count the collection
- look at them under a magnifying glass, looking for bite marks
- describe the differences between the items - big, little, smooth, rough
- make patterns with the different items
- estimate how many of each you can hold in one hand, then try and count them
Curriculum areas: M04a, M03a, R09b, M01b, M02b, M02c
Lunch Snack
Make peanut butter and rice cracker squirrel faces, and use a squirrel cookie cutter to make fruit kebabs on the side.
Curriculum areas: S13b, S13c
Activity 3
Make a squirrel feeder.
Curriculum areas: E02a, E02c
Activity 4
Play acorn bingo: draw a grid each, and take turns rolling a dice to see how many nuts you can put on it; the first person to cover all the squares wins
There are lots more squirrel and acorn activities here!
Squirrels, Part 2
Introductory Facts
Watch a six-minute video, "Stupendous Squirrel Storage!"
Activity 1
Make several nests throughout the house using large boxes, cushions, and so one. Assign each one a number and then look for the correct number of "acorns" (or pinecones, or beanbags, or play food) to store in each.
Curriculum areas: M01a, M01b
Activity 2
Using the acorns collected in the previous session, write a letter on each and sort into a container for Upper Case and a container for Lower Case.
Curriculum areas: L08a,
Lunch Snack
Read about the different sorts of foods squirrels like, and make a grazing platter of all the different (human-safe) ones on the list.
Curriculum areas: S13b, S13c, S13d
Activity 3
Make a paper cup squirrel or a pinecone squirrel.
Curriculum areas: M06c
Activity 4
Read some more fun squirrel facts here.
Turkeys
Introductory Facts
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Lunch Snack
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Activity 4
Wolves
Introductory Facts
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Lunch Snack
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Activity 3
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Activity 4
North American Animals Theme Recap
Activity 1
Play "feed the animals". Print and cut out the animal faces in the attachments and stick to the top of a jar. Provide a bowl of green split peas and a bowl of dried red kidney beans, and use a spoon to feed the split peas to the herbivores and the kidney beans to the carnivores, and both to the omnivores.
Curriculum areas: M07a, E11b, S13c
Activity 2
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Lunch Snack
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Activity 3
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