At primary school children learn about life processes and living things. If you’ve got a child who would love to have a pet, has a keen interest in animals or just needs a bit of help bringing this area of science to life, here are a few of simple ideas for how you can help them with this area of their school work.
Select images of different types of pets either from magazine cuttings or printed from the internet. Now create a series of statements that relate to each image for example ‘I need lots of attention and exercise’ for a picture of a dog or ‘I only need a few flakes of food a day’ for a goldfish. Cut up all your statements and pictures so they are separate from each other and then challenge your child to create a collage matching them together correctly with pieces of colourful wool or string. It might even prove a useful exercise in why getting a puppy really is a big responsibility if that’s a popular topic of conversation!
Use your senses
All animals have the senses of taste, hearing, smell and sight. To help make this point, why not play the senses game by challenging them to use their senses to identify objects, smells, tastes and sounds around the home while blindfolded? Discuss afterwards how animals use their senses to help them survive.
Get habitat happy
On a long car journey play a simple and fun game together based on matching as many different habitats animals live in as you can think of, for example:
Frog – pond
Rabbit – warren
Bird – tree
Monkey – jungle
Sheep – field/mountain
Camel – desert
Other ideas and worksheets are available in the science section of the EdPlace website.