Investigating Animals & Their Habitats

My children and I thoroughly enjoyed this lesson because it involves geography and zoology. In this unit, we studied so much about animals and their habitats. We learned and researched and read. And yes, we also had fun. We are so glad that we are using this science program this year.

In this post, we will show you some of the things we learned in this unit: Investigating Animals and their Habitats as well as give you details about this science program that we love. I am talking about Nancy Larson Science 1. This is Unit D already and we have loved every step of the way.

These big habitat cards and half animal cards come with our kit. We learned about three habitats at a time and sorted the animals that live in each of the habitats that we were focusing on. It was so much fun watching them discuss their reasoning with each other about the animals.

It was funny hearing my three-year old asking her brother, “Can you imagine if a bison lived in the desert?” They laughed and laughed. They were glad that animals in the desert habitat didn’t have as much fur or have big appetites like a bison. To give the lesson more of a hands-on approach, we used mini animal replicas (not included for this unit, but very affordable).

This unit had eight very thorough and complete lessons. You can see the specific topics covered in the picture above. I love how Nancy Larson Science 1 covers it all! One of our favorite lessons was on animal camouflage. It was amazing to see pictures and even videos of animals and insects that are barely noticeable to the naked eye until they move a tiny bit or they are pointed out to us.

Nancy Larson Science 1 thought of everything. One of the things we love about this curriculum (and I mention it every time we write a post about Nancy Larson Science) is that they provide us with a very comprehensive list of books that we can check out from the library that go with each lesson.

What I mean is that they give us between 3 and 6 titles FOR EVERY LESSON! I am telling you: this is an awesome list! We are sure to find at least one of the titles, but if we are particularly interested in one of the lessons, we get them all! The time and effort that went into putting this list together is priceless and there it is, at our fingertips for every unit. 🙂

Take a look at a tiny portion of our reading list for this unit at the bottom of this post.

Look at our pond, ocean and ice habitats from Nancy Larson Science 1! It was fantastic going through the lists of the animals that live in each and we created our own “diorama-type” habitats using the mini animal replicas. We also made a rainforest mini diorama once. You can see it here. For the ice habitat, we made sure that we clarified that polar bears and penguins do not co-habitate. Polar bears live in the Arctic (north pole) and penguins live in the Antarctic (south pole).

Nancy Larson Science 1 also includes a student reading and activity booklet as well as a review and assessment booklet for every subject. This is all created in such a fantastic way that children don’t really feel like they are being assessed, but rather using paper and pencil for a little bit. This is one thing I love about this program.

Most of the curriculum has a lot of hands-on and reading materials and it doesn’t waste our students’ time with meaningless busy work. Every single thing that Nancy Larson Science 1 includes in the teacher dialogue lesson pages and the other materials is instrumental for learning. This program is about learning 100% of the time. We love the experiments, the CD with so many printable images and information and the online support for homeschoolers.

Look at everything that is included in the Science 1 kit. Yes, this is just one kit! Isn’t it amazing? We are getting ready to take out our mini insect replicas from the kit and order our ladybug and caterpillar larvae (prepaid order forms are included in the kit). We are so excited about our next unit!