Animals Around the World: Asia

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. 

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.