Learn About Animals on Different Continents

Since I’ve been working on a nations of the world series for more than a year now, I’ve been thinking more about geography and how places are connected in ways that we might not always think about.

And one thing that different nations on the same continent often have in common is the animals that live in the wild there. Little kids especially will love learning about different animals and the habitats in which they live with these resources.

Montessori Nature has a nice set of printables for each continent with different animals to math the ones shown on the map. (Free with email) These can be used on their own or with the animal TOOBs (this set for example includes the crocodile, gorilla, elephant and more). Match the animals with their pictures on the cards, or hide them in a sensory bin for kids to find and then sort by continent.

Mama’s Happy Hive has a lovely felt map of the world that she uses for continent activities, including matching animals to the continents they live on. Her animals all live in boxes organized by continent, which frankly I’m a little jealous of.

Gift of Curiosity has a set of free printable animal cards and a post all about how they used them as a map activity.

If you’re able to pay for resources, Chalk Academy has a great set of animals of the world cards that are available in English, Korean and simplified or traditional Chinese.

Pinay Homeschooler has a post all about using little animal figures with printables of the continents and their animals, and they have a set of printables for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers that includes maps of each continent showing five animals each that you can use with animal figures or by printing out animal cards to match those on the maps.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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