The Beastiary, a science notebook

I discovered that my little boy seemed to have trouble distinguishing between wild and tame animals.  I wanted a project that we could do throughout the year that would help him learn to classify animals,  so my husband and I came up with The Beastiary.  This was my first attempt at notebooking with my children, and I admit I am now hooked.

monkey

 

I started with a 3 ring binder. We would  read about different animals in the National Geographic Guide to Mammals, then we would add that animal to our beastiary. If we were reading a library or other storybook that had an animal in it we would add that animal too.

kangaroo and raccoon

First, J would color the animals picture in a coloring book. I liked to use the Rod and Staff coloring books for this. Then he would attempt to draw the animal himself.  I would have him write the animal’s name on his drawing.  I would then ask him to tell me what he knew about the animal (this is why we would read first). I would  usually would require him to narrate 2 sentences about the animal, and name if it were wild/tame and we would classify them as omnivore or herbivore etc. 

 

Then J would cut out the pictures and words and paste them on a piece of construction paper, which would then be 3 hole punched and placed in the binder.

 

J loved his Beastiary and likes to  read it often.  I am pleased to say he now is well aware of the differences between  wild and tame animals. He can also identify mammmals and can place most animals in thier  proper habitats.

I really enjoyed this first foray into  notebooking with my son. I am currently trying to gather ideas for Native American and Astronomy notebooks, as we will be studying those this year.