For example, Arowana (fish) fathers are mouth brooders. Some animal parents have unusual or extraordinary strategies for protecting their young. Have older students challenge themselves a bit and choose a less common animal.Īmong animals, there are widely ranging levels of parental care, from fretting over them for 18+ years before launching them into the world to laying eggs and leaving young to fend for themselves. Younger kids can tackle the classics, like frogs and ladybugs. Invite them to create a poster showing the life cycle of that creature. See links at the end of the article for image resources.Īssign each student an animal or have them choose. Note: Tailor these to your audience-easy matches for young students, harder ones for older students. Have students share their sets, giving their classmates an overview of that animal’s life cycle. You might want to designate an area for students to go after they have located their matching card(s).Ĥ. Have students move about the room until they locate their match(es). Photo cards of life cycle stages (ranging from young/adult for most vertebrates to egg/larvae/pupa/adult for many insects).ģ.Photo cards of animal babies and parents, enough for each student in your class to have one card (if you have an odd number of students, count yourself too!) OR.

What I like about this topic is that it can be accessed by very young children, who might explore very simple life cycles like puppies and ladybugs, but it can be made very challenging for older students, who can explore the unusual life cycles of creatures like cicada and jellyfish. Since babies really need no further introduction, we’ll jump right into the activities!Īll living things on earth have one thing in common-a life cycle that starts with birth, continues with growth and then reproduction, and ends with death. This makes oohing and aahing over leggy lambs or tiny tadpoles and other baby animals a perfect segue into several related science topics, including life cycles, survival strategies, and inherited traits. But my child loves playing with this (I wouldn't call it a reading book), so I guess that's the most important thing.All kids love babies-although big kids might not want to admit it. Ours has torn flaps and pages coming loose from the binding after 4 weeks.

4)If you have an independent toddler, they may want to work the squares, chutes, and flaps themselves.this book could be built a little sturdier. 3)Some of the chutes are loose enough that a square slides nicely, but my child sees that as an opportunity to shove two and three squares in at the same time. 2)The squares sometimes get stuck in the chutes and you need something (popsicle sticks work well) to push them on through. 1)You have to keep up with the squares.maybe it's just my child but she seems to find countless new places to stash these pieces. It comes with card board squares meant to be dropped down chutes in the pages so that the child can find them under flaps. It's fairly labor intensive for a book in my opinion. daughter got this book for Christmas and loves it. If you're buying for younger, I'd supervise them to help keep the book in tact. If anything, I'd make the ages for this maybe 3 and up. Great concept, I'd love to keep it around for a second child, but I don't know if that will happen. I try to only let him do this when I'm around so I can try and prolong the life of this book, but already at 8 weeks I can see this book is beat up and I'm hoping it will last at least a year. It's taught him a few new animals (fox, squirrel) and it's taught him about animal 'homes' and habitats. Lastly, in some spots the animals don't always slide down, so you have to shake the book to help them along. Of course the kids love this so they are anxious to open the flaps, these on our book are the most beat up. Let me clarify, even with me letting my son only play with this while he is supervised, (other than the few times he's grabbed it on his own while I'm not looking) this book is not even 8 weeks out of the package and it's pretty beat up! Like someone else mentioned, the chutes for the animals can often fit more than one animal card, and if your child is playing solo with this book, he will find a way to get 4 in one slot and thus the openings are bending and loose. First let me say I've loved every Baby Einstein book we've bought, my son loves them all, this one included! But, I have to agree with the other reviewers that this book can get torn up pretty quickly by a 2 year old. This book is a great concept, with slightly flawed design.

Baby animals match