Our Vertebrate - Invertebrate Unit

Our study on invertebrates starts when I hit a cockroach.  I called my little one, showed her  and told that it does not have a backbone and it’s an invertebrate.

But my little one felt sorry for the cockroach and asked me why I hit it.

“It would be paining” she added.

“No, it won’t. It lacks a nervous system and invertebrates cannot feel the pain.”

I had a lizard skeleton which I preserved a long ago for our vertebrate unit.  I also had a fish skeleton. I brought it and we had a closer look using our magnifier.

I set our vertebrate tray with a paper human skeleton, a plastic Dinosaur skeleton and the skeletons of fish and lizard.

Watch this wonderful video by Arvind Gupta to make a simple paper skeleton.

For a sorting practice, I gave her a handful of toys from our miniature unit.  She went inside, took the entire miniature unit and started sorting it.

But,  soon she started playing with her whale and shark.

A Diorama of Sources of Water

It’s been my little one’s long time wish to visit a waterfall.  Her wish fulfilled recently. We visited 'kutralam' one of the famous waterfalls in Tamilnadu, India .  Though it’s not the season time and there was only a little water, she had a very nice time there. She even had a bath in the water falls. She and her dad stood under the cold herbal water for a long.  When she returned from the waterfalls, she was really icy cold. 

We used to visit the beaches, lakes, river and pond now and then.  So, I thought of making  a diorama of sources of water with my little one(Similar to land form models).

 I set the model of waterfall, river, pond, lake, well and tube wells in a cardboard box. I used agar agar strips for the waterfalls and small plastic boxes for pond and Lake. We also added few toys to represent the life in pond, lake and the riverside.

It really helped her to understand the source and destination of a river (Destination -Ocean is not included in the diorama as we thought of doing a separate study).

 We also visited our farmland to see the bore well.

We also watched this video

See our experiment on water cycle and sensory play on pond life