Animals in Winter Inquiry

Our students have been very interested in learning about animals in winter.  It all started when one student was telling his peers about a coyote he had seen in his backyard during the Christmas Break.  This led the students to discuss what other animals they saw in winter.

We started by reading the book A Warm Winter Tail and having a class discussion about ways in which we stay warm.  This lead us to discuss what animals do to keep warm in winter.

I started planning for this inquiry by getting some of my favourite books about animals in winter.  As we read them, we decided to write down on a chart what animals do.  We learned 3 important words: hibernation, migration and adaptation.

We left this chart up for the duration of our inquiry and added to it as we researched and read about more animals. 

I noticed that students also enjoyed the various books and began to draw animals that they were interested in.  We began to create 3 large murals outside in the hallway and glued the animals that the children had painted to each. 

We even added snowflakes made out of paper!

Here is our finished product!

We added labels next to each animal.

We continued to work with the students on researching any one animal they chose.  At first, only a few students were interested.  But we noticed that once the students presented their information to the rest of the class, others wanted to research an animal too!

Students drew and used watercolour paints to represent their animal.

We created large class books (Animals that Hibernate, Animals that Migrate, Animals that Adapt) and had students present their research to other classes!

Here's a fun song we sang to wrap up our inquiry.  It was fun to substitute other animals in the song as well!