Mythical Creatures

Students create an imaginary animal by assembling pictures of body parts from pictures of real animals.  The others are "Who's Parts Do I Have?" and "Animals Piece by Piece."  This task assesses students' abilities to sort organisms and objects into groups according to their parts and describe how the groups are formed; record observations about parts of animals including wings, feet, heads, and tails; and identify parts that, when separated from the whole, may result in the part or the whole not working, such as cars without wheels, and plants without roots.

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Students will:

  • conduct investigations
  • gather, organize, and represent data
  • formulate conclusions from investigational data

apply scientific principles to develop explanations and solve new problems

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Applying
Extension suggestions: 

Cut animal pictures from magazines or cut body parts off the animal picture and sort into the correct box or tub.

Have a pet day

  • Arrange to have students bring pets confined to cages to school for a visit. Arrange to have some unique pets such as a hermit crab, a worm, an insect, or a fish visit. Name and describe the parts of each animal. Have students observe the animals and record their observations in their journals.

Centers

  • Mathematics: one-to-one correspondence; counting parts;
  • Language Arts: positional terms, such as above, below, on, in, under, left and right;
  • Social Studies: sort into farm or zoo animals and place in categories; place farm animals in the barn and zoo animals in the habitat;
  • Art: clay animals; tracing animal shapes; lacing animal shapes;
  • Science: animal puzzles; handle animal coverings such as feathers, fur, scales, etc.

Field Trips

  • Visit a petting zoo, a farm, or a pet store.

No possible NCTM criteria to add to rubric

Helpful Hints

At each station students should have:

  • Story such as Eric Carle's The Mixed Up Chameleon
  • Animal pictures cut from magazines, coloring books, etc.
  • Boxes or tubs labeled: arms, wings, heads, legs, tails, etc.
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • Paper
  • Animal Journal

References

Contributors: