On a recent trip to the library my son spotted one of these life cycle books and immediately borrowed it and brought it home. He really enjoyed reading and asked if I could see if there were any other books in the series which we could borrow from the library (our library allows us to check online and reserve copies), there were and we ended up with four different life cycle books.
And I must admit I share my son’s opinion about these books they are brilliant. Each book focuses on a habitat – desert, ocean, river, forest and mountain. The book starts by introuducing that habitat (very briefly) and it shows a world map depicting where you can find these areas. It then selects 3 of those areas and choses a food chain from each of those 3 areas. Then it goes through each food chain and shows the life cycle of each animal within the three food chains – so not only do the kids see a number very different life cycles but they see how they interact with each other within a food chain – I love this. Then at the end of the book they show one food web for one of the three food chains that was discussed in the book.
Really a well thought out way to present this information and they end up dealing with many topics within these little books. I really am impressed with how this was planned and presented (the only thing I would have liked was if they included the starting point for each food chain – the producer).
Oh and the page layout is also brilliant on the left hand side they show the outlines of the different animals in each food chain and the animal on your page is circled so the kids can also check to see where they are in the current food chain. I think these are brilliant books for primary aged kids to read.
So to give you a better idea of the food chains and life cycles covered in these books I am going to breakdown the four books that we have been reading to each food chain and the life cycles included in those food chains. (The books we borrowed from the library were older editions and the newer versions have different covers but the inside pages still look the same).
The first life food chain is from the Rivers of South America and includes the following life cycles – catfish, cormorant, piranha and river dolphin.
The second food chain is from the Rivers of North America and includes the following life cycles – mayfly, brook trout and grizzly bear.
And the third food chain is from ponds of Europe and includes the following life cycles – great pond snail, great crested newt, little grebe and the otter.
The first food chain is the Indian Ocean and includes the following life cycles – coral, crown of thorns starfish, pufferfish and tiger shark.
The second food chain is the Pacific Ocean and includes the following life cycles – pink shrimp, black-eyed squid, silver salmon and bald eagle.
And the third food chain is from the Atlantic Ocean and includes the following life cycles – box jellyfish, sea turtle and the orca.
The first food chain is from the forests of southern Asia and includes the following life cycles – honey bee, white crab spider, grey langur and the bengal tiger.
The second food chain is from the forests if North America and includes the following life cycles – white-tailed deer, vampire bat, red-tailed hawk.
And the third food chain is from the forest o southern Africa and includes the following life cycles – stick insect, chameleon, hornbill and wild dog.
The first food chain is from the Rocky Mountains in North America and includes the following life cycles – earwig, woodpecker, flying squirrel and wolverine.
The second food chain is from the Himalayas in Asia and includes the following life cycles – mosquito, alpine butterwort, mountain goat and the snow leopard.
And the third food chain is from the Andes Mountains in South America and includes the following life cycles – chinchilla, skunk and the owl.
As you can see the do include a wide variety of different creatures.
Admin – as I mentioned these are books that we have borrowed from our local library
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