ANIMALS OF THE WORLD: PK-4

Ana's Week

I first decided to do an “animals of the world” unit as a way to cover multiple animal habitats (minus ocean and arctic, since we covered those habitats earlier in the year) and learn at least some of the animals you can find in each. However, the unit ended up also being an excellent way to introduce Aria to the names of the continents, which is not only a great geography lesson, but also will be useful for when we do a “cultures of the world” unit later in the year.

For this unit, I found some great resources through Oriental Trading that really enhanced our unit and I highly recommend getting them if you do this unit. They have a great sticker pack with backgrounds for each habitat, animals from each habitat, and the names of each animal to match. This allowed us not only to learn what animals live in what habitats, but also practice our phonics and beginning of the word sounds. I also found a great continents activity, in which you place stickers of the animals on the continent in which they live. The great thing about Oriental Trading, too, is that they make classroom sized sets, so I have plenty of extras for years to come!

The girls both loved spending the week playing with Aria’s animal box and sorting out which animals live in which habitat. As a reward for finishing up half of an alphabet tracing notebook during the week, Aria even got a new set of Safari animals (this time the desert ones), which she loved (and which totally freaked me out because of my major snake phobia)!
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Because Aria already knows many of her animals, and we had been to the zoo mere weeks before and therefore didn’t need to fit in a field trip, we were able to take this week as somewhat more relaxed than previous weeks and enjoyed playdates with friends and fully getting back into activities after colds and snow days! Though I could have easily done a week for each habitat, I’m glad I covered it all in one stroke, as I could tell this week didn’t excite Aria as much as the winter and space units. Looking forward to moving into the fun holidays coming up and getting Aria hyped up again! 

CLICK HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOADABLE ANIMALS OF THE WORLD UNIT