Pink has a natural love of animals and is always asking me questions about animals- often the type of question that I can not answer so I was glad when she started asking me about the different groups of animals.

The questions first arose after we started reading the Berenstain Bears book of Science.  We loved this book as it is a very gentle introduction into a number of the science topics covered in Key Stage 1 science (UK).

After reading the book and discussing the groups I turned to Pinterest and I found these wonderful animal classification worksheets  on the Have Fun Teaching website – they where a big hit.  I actually printed off 2 copies and about 2 weeks after we did the first copy we redid them again as a revision.

Then by chance I was reading a Julia Donaldson book called Monkey Puzzle to little brother and I realised that the book covers all the groups.

So I called Pink over and we all re-read the book together only this time we stopped and discussed which animal group each animal belongs to.  I really liked this as the book deals with -a  monkey, elephant, butterfly, spider, parrot, bat, frog and a snake.  And if that is not enough if you look at the pictures in the book they include – a fish, a crocodile, a grasshoper and a number of other insects.  Also the book talks about how the butterflies babies look different to their mom. Another great Julia Donaldson book

We also have lots of plastic toy animals in the house which are great for imaginative play.  So when then kids are playing with them we will often casually talk about the animal, where does it live, what did it eat and now is it a mammal ?