Awesome Animal Projects!

If you have been following my blog, you know that we have been studying animals for the past several weeks.  Those of you who have not been following along, I don't know where you've been, but I'm glad you came around ;)  As a culminating activity for our animal study, I assigned an Animal Research Project.  I tried this last year with my K/1 kids and they loved it, so I thought I would bring it back.  The parents seem to enjoy it as well.

I send home this information sheet on Monday and the project is due on Friday.  They have no other homework for the week, so they really get to spend some time on their project.

Each kiddo picks an animal that they want to learn more about.  They research it and decide how they want to present their information (poster, display board, diorama, etc.)  They had to answer the 5 questions above.  If you can't read them , here they are. . .

1.  What is your animal's habitat?
2.  What does your animal eat?
3.  What kind of animal is it (mammal, fish, bird, reptile, amphibian)?
4.  What kind of covering does your animal have (feathers, fur, scales, skin, hair, shell)?
5.  How does your animal move (walk, crawl, hop, slither, fly)?

The only requirements were that they had to answer these questions, and their project had to include writing and pictures.

They did an awesome job!  Here are a few examples:

She made lion ears to wear during her presentation.

No, I do not have a kindergartener with wonderful handwriting such as this.  He told his mom what to write.

She created a swordfish game.  She let students select a number, and then she asked the question that correlated with the number.  The students tried to answer the questions and she told them if they were wrong or right and then explained the answers.

On Friday, each kiddo got to present their project to the class.  I was proud of how well they read the information!  Such cuties!

To celebrate and extend our study of animals, we took a field trip to the San Francisco Zoo.  It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of animals.  We even got to see a baby gorilla!  We spotted this guy while we were there too!  Absolutely beautiful!