GR. 1 SCIENCE UNIT

Lessons

1: Animals
2: Animal Charades
3: Animals Shapes
4: Animal Coats
5: Lunch Time
6: Animal Friends
7: Animal Sort
8: Off to Petland
9: Basic Needs for Pets
10: The Pet Vet
11: Staying Alive
12: Animal Habitats
13: Animal Adaptations
14: Animal Homes
15: Staying Alive
16: Animal Life Cycles
17: Animal Babies
18: Birds and Reptiles

LESSON 16 – ANIMAL LIFE CYCLES

Background: An animal's life begins as a tiny egg. Some animals grow inside their mother's body and others are born alive. Some animals lay eggs and the young are hatched outside of their mother's body. Once they have hatched, animals grow and develop into adults and eventually die.

Objective: Describe the development of animals from birth or hatching to maturity
Describe the physical changes of several animals from the newly hatched or
born to the mature adult.

Vocabulary: life cycle, stages, mammals, birds

Quick Peek: By observing a penguin and a dog, the children discuss the meaning of "a life cycle".

Materials: overhead projector
Penguin overhead
sentence strips cut and put into a box
a dog (or a picture of a dog)

Method:

1. Display the life cycle pictures of the penguin on the overhead projector --discuss how a penguin is a bird and the various stages of its life.
2. Define a life cycle by going through the changes that the animal goes through between birth and death.
3. Display the box where you have previously put the life cycle sentences. Select students to come up to the front and pull a strip out of the box. After reading it aloud, he/she is asked to point out the stage in the life cycle of the penguin. Proceed until each stage has been identified.
4. Prior to your lesson, arrange for a child who has a dog to bring their pet to class. Observe the dog and ask the owner questions such as the following:

What did your pet look like when it was born?
How has it changed?
Does it look like its parent?
What does its parent look like?
*Discuss how the child's dog is a mammal and that it was born alive. Its body was covered with hair or fur. It drank milk from its mother. It needed at least one parent to care for it after it was born.

5. Using the information that has been discussed, ask the students to reflect on the life cycle of the dog -- the stages that came before now, and the stages that will come next.

*Excellent books to share during this section of the unit:
The Kids Canadian Bird Book by Pamela Hickman
25 Mammals Every Child Should Know by Jim Arnosky
When An Animal Grows by Millicent E. Selsam
Growing Up by Karen O'Callaghan & Kate Londesborough
Chickens Aren't The Only Ones by Ruth Heller
Egg! By A.J. Wood -- (an unfold each page and look book)
Animals Born Alive and Well by Ruth Heller
The Egg Book by Jack Kent
Eggs by Macdonald Educational (Macdonald Starters series)

*Other great ideas:
Incubate and hatch chicks in class.