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.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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