Our family is currently studying continents and animals in a homemade curriculum I've titled Animals Around the World. This study was designed to be a relaxed introduction for my beginning elementary students. We just finished a three week unit on Asian animals, so today, I'm sharing what we did.
Goals:
I want my kids to be able to find Asia on a map and to tell a little bit about what makes it special. I also want them to learn about a wide variety of animals and have a descent idea where they live.
Geography:
Our Asian study focused more on the animals of Asia than the landmarks. We talked mostly about the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China, but while reading books Zeke (7) paid close attention to Mt. Everest. We also found islands, deserts, and mountains on a map, but we spent most of our time talking about the Indian jungle.
Animals:
The
Columbus Zoo is conveniently divided (mostly) by continents, so we went with notebooks and pencils in hand and drew pictures of each of the animals we saw. Zeke was expected to draw the animals and write their names, while Quinn was allowed to just draw the animal. I highly recommend bringing mechanical pencils and extra lead or a bag of crayons, because we had a few pencil issues and I was only safe, because I brought the crayons too. This was such a fun way for the kids to learn about the animals. We go to the zoo all the time and the kids are usually very quick to walk through each exhibit, but when I gave them the job of recording their observations, they took it seriously and slowed down. Quinn (5) even recorded prints she found in the concrete.
Extras:
I try to add in an extra animal or geography related topic for each of our units, and for this unit I chose animal classification. For Quinn and Wyatt (3), I wanted to introduce the concept of classification and the names amphibian, mammal, and reptile. They already know about birds and fish, so I used that as a jumping off point. I dove a little deeper with Zeke, to get him started thinking about what characteristics put the animals in the different groups. I found
this sample from Mercedes Merrell to complete and add to our science notebooks. I didn't love it, but for a print and go activity, it did the job and the free price was exactly what I needed.
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| Zeke helping Wyatt sort out his animals. |
Our favorite books:
Before the start of each unit, I request stacks of books from the library. We don't always read all of them together, but the kids wander off with some and it gives us options. For this unit, I typed "Asia" and "Asian animals" into the library search bar and reserved just about everything that looked age appropriate. Not many of the books stood out in my mind enough to add them to this post, but we did read or at least look through each of the animal books. However, none of them stood out in my mind enough to write down for future lessons, so if you're going to do this unit, I recommend doing the same sort of search at your local library.
We're using the
Introducing Continents series for our first look at each continent and
Introducing Asia did not disappoint. The series gives a nice general look at each continent and the writing is easily understood by elementary students.
For a fun read aloud book, I turned to
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. We kept it simple with just the first three Mowgli stories. My intent was to take Zeke to the theater to see the new movie after finishing the book, but we haven't gotten around to it yet.
Another fun picture book is The Saggy Baggy Elephant. I used the
Step Into Reading version, instead of the original
Golden Book version, and had Zeke read it to me. This version was a good match for his early reading abilities.
Movies/ shows:
My favorite movie for this unit is
Equator: Battle for the light. I'm always amazed at how much the kids pick up from watching a documentary. I learned a lot too. This movie really showed how everything is connected in the jungle.
My kids also enjoyed the short Asian animal show on
Animal Atlas.
It was very neat to see the connection between The Jungle Book stories we were reading and the animals actually found in the jungle, so I highly recommend watching
The Real Jungle Book movie.
Final Thoughts:
Other than a three week timeline, we did not have a set schedule for this unit. Most of the formal work was done in just a few days, but I kept Asia and its animals in our conversations and tried to make the kids think about it as often as possible. We constantly looked at our dollar store map hanging on the wall and made connections between our books and movies and everything else. My assessment of their gained knowledge has been made by things that they are still telling me and pictures they have drawn.
Entertainment connections:
I have found that the kids really like to
make connections about the places we are learning about and shows they
watch.
Where is Carmen Sandiego? is a current favorite and Zeke gets
excited when they talk about places we've studied. To specifically tie in with Asia, we watched
The King and I.
We have been working on a large unit study of continents and animals
for a few months. We do most of our study through books, visits to the
zoo, Wild Kratts, and documentaries; but I found this sample from Mercedes Merrell
to add to our science notebooks. I like the picture part of it well
enough. A couple of the amphibians looked a little more like reptiles,
but they were close enough. I didn't love some of her wording choices
for the characteristics chart, but we made it work. An unexpected
benefit of this activity was seeing Zeke step up to help his siblings
correctly sort the animals.
Quinn (5) finished working her way through This Reading Mama's Reading the Alphabet this month. When we first started, she did each of the activities, but as she
learned more of the sight words, she wanted to move faster. Quinn loved the books, rhyming
mats, and syllable cards, so as soon as we completed those activities, she wanted to move on to the next lesson. I did
print everything though, because I plan to use the program with my
younger kids as their first formal lessons. 
After finishing Reading the Alphabet, we moved right into This Reading Mama's Learn to Read. The Learn to Read program isn't entirely free, but she offers enough of it free to suit Quinn's needs. The books are a perfect continuation of the Reading the Alphabet program, but speeds up the pace a little by introducing two new sight words per book. The first three books in each short vowel unit focus on a word family and the forth book is a review. As of writing this post, Quinn has only used the -AT, -AD, and -AN family books. I'm purposely trying to take these slow and really work on each of the word families as we go. 
