Animal Classification - Vertebrates

We did living /non-living last week and this week we are moving onto the 5 kingdoms - starting with the Animal Kingdom

We stated by trying to classify buttons - I handed them a large pile of green buttons and asked how they would separate them. They started with two hole buttons and four hole buttons

then moved on to dark coloured and light coloured

then style or pattern

We discussed how living things can be divided like this and the scientists divide living things into 5 kingdoms (Fungi, Animals, Moneran, Plants and Protists - had these cards for ages and can't remember where I downloaded them) and we would stat by looking at the animal kingdom.

We've set the whole thing up on a portable chalk board, colour coded for ease of use.

Then we discussed how the animal kingdom is divided into two main sets (phylum) invertebrates and chordate (sub-phylum vertebrates)

after discussing the main characteristics we used the Vertebrate/Invertebrate cards from Montessori Print Shop

We focused on the vertebrates. We looked at some animal x-rays (printed from google) and asked if they could spot anything similar about them (they all had skulls and backbones) then asked if they could guess what group each animal belonged to.

 Once we had identified that they were fish, mammal, reptile, bird and amphibian we discussed how these made up the 5 classes of vertebrates and used the Vertebrate Question cards from Montessori Print Shop to learn more about each class

and found another use for our Vertebrate/Invertebrate cards  - sorting the vertebrates by type : )

Disclaimer

Some product was provided free to me for the purpose of review. I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.