Animal Artifacts

Last week, our class went to the Natural History Museum to learn about the animals that live on each continent and in the oceans.  Now we are using the information we learned to build our class exhibit on the map of the world.

Continents (minus Europe and Asia)

A few months ago, we began learning about the continents and oceans as part of our geography unit.  We are building our final project for this unit on the bulletin board in the hallway in front of the classroom.  I started by drawing the continents on green paper.  I asked parent and student volunteers help cut out continents and then we pinned them on the board.

Once we had the backdrop done, I started animal project by assigning each table of kiddos in my class (there are 3-4 kids at each table) one of the 5 oceans, and we had one table that worked on the major mountain ranges.  (In the other first grade class, each table was assigned one of the 7 continents.)  The kiddos got to look through books and pictures online to learn about the animals that live in their particular region (continent, ocean, or mountain range).   Once they had an idea of the animal they wanted to create, they started to draw their animals.

After the kiddos had their sketches, they cut out their shapes from colored felt.  We started with just the background color, but then the kiddos got to choose "accessories" such as sequins for scales, googly eyes, feathers, and textured felt for spots and designs.  Our sweet Art Teacher lent us all the materials for the kiddos to add to their animals.

Finally, the kiddos got to pin their animals onto our map of the world, according to their continent, ocean, or mountain range of origin. The animals turned out so cute!  These artifacts are an important part of our Museum Exhibit that we will share with our families later this week.



Here are a few of my favorite animal artifacts :)