I was reading the EL thread with interest. I have a few links to share with you for your zoology unit. I have a zoo unit posted at HSS; you will find gobs of animal information, notebooking pages, and minit books for a lapbook (if you desire to make one with your dc). Also, we have an entire page dedicated to animal classification with lots of different ideas. Learning Page has GOBS of great FREE printables (much nicer looking than Enchanted Learning). You have to sign up to join, but it's free! Hope that helps a little.
I'm so glad that I stopped by here before searching the web again LOL. (Hard to do on dialup!) Thanks for that extra help...I am definitely having a hard time pulling this together myself. It's my first year of structured schooling, which is usually tough. And because I'm new to this, creating my own units is a really daunting task. I felt a lot safer with "curriculum in a box" LOL...but this zoology "course" is probably the best way to motivate my daughter to learn. And since nobody makes a full course like this, I can't rely on a curriculum provider. Takes my safety net right out from under me LOL...but I think that after some trial and error, it will be the best subject we have. I was going to ask a question about this on the board anyway...what are all the ways to present zoology to a kindergartener? At first I was just going to introduce one animal at a time, as I could think them up. Then I was going to introduce one animal at a time, but alphabetically like they are on EL. But then I thought of doing units like "Sea Creatures" (Samantha looooves that term lol), or "African Animals" or something revolving around location. Then I thought about presenting "types" of animals, such as various kinds of birds, or various types of bugs, and staying on a subject for as long as it takes to learn a little about each one. Which way would you do it, if you were creating a course like this? I know that any of these would be okay, but I would just like to know what route others would take. And if any of you have other ideas for how to organize/present this subject, I would be SO grateful! I still need to sift through all the ideas before I choose. As you can tell, we're starting school late LOL. Some of our materials still haven't arrived, and I'd hoped to officially start tomorrow. I may start some subjects tomorrow, like Handwriting, though. Thanks to everyone for all the help in this! It's great to not have to go it alone.
I'd go with types or places, rather than one at a time. I guess the advantage with types is that you would get a feel for the common and defining features of birds, reptile, mammal etc. Th advantage with places, like african animals etc, is that you would also be able to incorporate world geography, and gain an understaning of how the whole ecosystem works together.
I'm so excited, I was able to come up with the money for the EL membership after all! I think I'm going to subscribe this afternoon. =) I hope that it's really worth the money...looks fantastic though! I think I'm also going to buy an "ocean life" unit study on ebay. It costs under $4 for 6 weeks of material. But what's best is the time it'll save me LOL. I'm glad I found a sea creatures unit, because that's what I already tried to start on. I was going to do African animals first, but last week I remembered that my dad's beach trip starts on Monday, and figured I'd use that opportunity to request "sea creatures" as souvenirs and study them first instead LMAO! He says he'll try to bring a large starfish and a small shark's jaw back, and maybe some other things, for Sammie. We all went to the beach together in June but I didn't get the stuff then. I hope it wasn't too sneaky to time my ocean animals unit this way...LOL.
