The 5 Common Classifications of Animals

Following the NC, we started a new Science topic on Animals. They're already familiar with a variety of animals from around the world, so I thought I'd begin by jumping straight in at classifying them.

We started by looking at the above sheet on the left: I found a variety of animals from each classification and sorted them into the right groups. These are all animals the girls are already familiar with to make things easier:

Mammals:
Bear, rabbit, monkey, lion, kangaroo, dog, cow

Birds:
Duck, ostrich, chicken, magpie

Reptiles:
Chameleon, snake (cobra), turtle

Fish:
Salmon, goldfish, tropical fish

Amphibians:
Toad, tree frog, salamander

I wanted to include a variety to showcase the different features found in each group as well as what makes them similar, while saving some other familiar animals for a separate worksheet!

After looking at the pictures and naming each one, I then showed them the sheet on the right with all the questions on it - these questions are designed to get them to look at the animals closer and in a more critical manner. We went through each group in turn, introducing the name of the group and then answering the questions verbally to come up with a possible criteria for why all those animals belong in that particular group.

Then I gave them each a blank worksheet with the 5 groups on it and some pre-cut pictures of 16 animals. Working together, they talked about where they thought each animal should go and why - using the posters from before to help.

I saved the picture of the humans for the bottom of the pile, which served as a nice surprise! 😂 Once they were happy with where each animal went and there was enough space to fit them all in the box, they glued the pictures down.

Mammals:
Humans, fox, elephant, horse, cat

Birds:
Parrot, penguin, sparrow

Reptiles:
Snake (python), tortoise, crocodile, gecko

Fish:
Koi, shark

Amphibians:
Frog, newt

We followed this activity up with a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet: read the description and then decided which group name needs to go where. We did this after a break as the first activity took a good while!

The next week we used the topic as an excuse to visit Thinktank and make the most of our membership! We wandered around the wildlife exhibit with the above worksheet and placed the animals we saw into the correct box. This probably took around 20min, then they spent the rest of the day playing in the rest of the museum. 😁👍

Of course, you can replace Thinktank with any other venue of your choice! I wanted to save a trip to the zoo for the end of the topic though (and sunnier weather... lol)

You can download all the worksheets here.