Mythical Creatures

Students create an imaginary animal by assembling pictures of body parts from pictures of real animals.  The others are "Who's Parts Do I Have?" and "Animals Piece by Piece."  This task assesses students' abilities to sort organisms and objects into groups according to their parts and describe how the groups are formed; record observations about parts of animals including wings, feet, heads, and tails; and identify parts that, when separated from the whole, may result in the part or the whole not working, such as cars without wheels, and plants without roots.

Weblink address (URL): 
Mythical Creatures

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Students will:

  • conduct investigations
  • gather, organize, and represent data
  • formulate conclusions from investigational data

apply scientific principles to develop explanations and solve new problems

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Applying
Extension suggestions: 

Cut animal pictures from magazines or cut body parts off the animal picture and sort into the correct box or tub.

Have a pet day

  • Arrange to have students bring pets confined to cages to school for a visit. Arrange to have some unique pets such as a hermit crab, a worm, an insect, or a fish visit. Name and describe the parts of each animal. Have students observe the animals and record their observations in their journals.

Centers

  • Mathematics: one-to-one correspondence; counting parts;
  • Language Arts: positional terms, such as above, below, on, in, under, left and right;
  • Social Studies: sort into farm or zoo animals and place in categories; place farm animals in the barn and zoo animals in the habitat;
  • Art: clay animals; tracing animal shapes; lacing animal shapes;
  • Science: animal puzzles; handle animal coverings such as feathers, fur, scales, etc.

Field Trips

  • Visit a petting zoo, a farm, or a pet store.

No possible NCTM criteria to add to rubric

Helpful Hints

At each station students should have:

  • Story such as Eric Carle's The Mixed Up Chameleon
  • Animal pictures cut from magazines, coloring books, etc.
  • Boxes or tubs labeled: arms, wings, heads, legs, tails, etc.
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • Paper
  • Animal Journal

References

Contributors: 
Sarah Armstrong
Originator: 
Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation