On Fridays I try to do a science activity that corresponds with our theme for the week. Our theme this week has been Dogs and we've also read about mammals and talked about the fact that dogs are mammals.
Since we have quite a few pets I thought it would be fun to take the kids on a little tour of all our pets and discuss whether or not each one was a mammal and why. Of course, it is a group of preschoolers and mostly we just had fun looking at, touching, holding and talking about the different animals. But we did take a little time to decide whether each one was a mammal or not.
Our first stop was to look at Austin's little box turtle. This turtle's name is Alien. He is a very active little turtle and fun to watch. Due to the obvious lack of hair we decided he was not a mammal, and I explained that he was a reptile.
Our next visit was with Little Red, our guinea pig. Little Red is very sweet natured and also has a lot of hair. She has a backbone, she drank milk as a baby and she is warmblooded. She's also a lot of fun to pet.
Next up were Amanda's pet rats. We didn't take them out of the cage as they can be a little temperamental sometimes. They do great with Amanda but I decided we would just look and not touch. The kids were excited to see them and we all agreed that they are mammals.
This is Lana.
The tan and cream rat here is Amber and the grey and cream rat is Mickey.
Next we went outside to see Miracle and Dragon our two larger box turtles. These two are less active than Alien is, but they were still interesting. And definitely not mammals.
We stopped and talked to Toby, one of our cats. Our other cat, Scout, was nowhere to be seen. We're seeing that most of our pets seem to be mammals.
One more pet - Roni. She just had surgery and she's wearing the cone to keep her from licking the stitches. She is, of course, also a mammal and the inspiration for our dog/mammal theme this week.
The kids had a lot of fun with this little pet tour and I think the animals enjoyed it as well.
Here is a list of our other dog/mammal related activities this week.
~Linking Here ~
These children are so sweet with the animals! You have a fun blog...I'll come back to visit again soon. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! I have dogs, cats and chickens here, with the occasional turtle wandering by. Lots of cows and sheep across the street, though.
ReplyDeleteNew follower from Relax and Surf Sunday!
You do have a lot of pets!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great lesson. I love that you are using real science vocabulary (mammals and reptiles)...so that these words will become so familiar to them at a young age. They certainly are capable of learning this vocabulary when an adult spends time with them. Great job!
ReplyDeleteMarcia :)
We've done a similar thing going to the pet store. The advantage of using your own pets is they can tough all of them.
ReplyDelete