has family heath issues; she dropped out of teaching for the remainder of this year and we have decided to not seek out a sub as there are so few weeks left. I was panicked, as I've never believed I was very strong in scientific concepts. What could I do for my son's science learning?
Well, it turns out it is not too hard to find things to do! I decided to finish off the Human Body, which is what the co-op teacher had been teaching, because my son has been immersed in body books this winter and spring. Then I have moved on to animals!
To review all he has learned, we watched some youtube videos about the human body systems. Then, we colored a human body flap book. This is something I downloaded from
: it has since been expanded and I had to buy it for the additions as well since the price is so right! (Created by
And then I decided it was time to branch out in to other animals. My now-retired public school teacher mother donated 50+ old copies of ZooBooks magazine to our school room. I decided it was time to learn about those animals with my son.
But it seemed we needed to learn what makes something alive first. Did my son understand the relationship between plants and animals? It's what we've been learning this year, but I am not sure he recognized the connection.
Can I tell you how hard it is to find something mentioning or teaching the five kingdoms of living things for a first grader?
Apparently, to most teachers, lower elementary means learning that there are plants and animals. But I knew my son could learn about the five kingdoms, so I had to make something for him.
First we watched a video about the kingdoms on school tube. (It was an okay video but it was pretty generic, and it was old and low quality: browse school tube or youtube for one you like.)
Then I spent less than an hour yesterday evening pulling photographs from flickr of the various different kinds of life. I made up a few flap page with the kingdom names, and here we have it.
My son watched over my shoulder a little. "Can I help you? Can I do it before I go to bed?" he asked.
"Nope. This is for school tomorrow." I replied.
"But can we do it
I love the eagerness. I love the delight he had as we cut, sorted, and glued today. I told him we only were going to learn a bit more about the animals, as we had already studied the plants (that was September to December) and the others were not as important for him. He said, "But I want to learn more about all of them!"
So, we shall see!
This is a pretty generic living things sort for you to use, but as I said, my son enjoyed it very much!
Click the image to get to the download page. Remember to let me know if you like it!
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