Animal Research with BrainpopJr

“The arctic is cold. It has walrus and whales.”

Open house is coming next week and my class has been busy researching about animals to make an animal research book. One of the many tools we used for this research is BrainPopJr. The kids all picked one animal to make their book about but we spent a lot of time learning about animals before deciding. I talked to the class a lot about picking an animal they knew little about and my hope was these activities below would get them excited about the research. (printable below)

Habitats: To kick of the project we spent a week watching the habitat videos on BrainpopJr (one each day, two on Friday.) After watching the video the kids all worked on a simple journal to draw and write about what they learned. One of my favorite things about BrainpopJr is that the videos are all short and sweet. Typically they are 5-10 min long and that is the perfect amount of time in my opinion. I gave the kids about 12 minutes to work on their journal and played the BrainpopJr video again while they worked. This really helps them include the correct vocabulary words in their journal. (pictured above) **If you do not have a subscription the Arctic habitat video is free to give you an idea of what Brainpop offers.

What Animals Eat: The second week one of our lessons included the Brainpop video called Food Chains. This video is full of great information but we focused mainly on herbivore, carnivore and omnivore. Just like for the habitat lesson we first watched the video in large group and then discussed what we learned. Afterwards I gave the kids pictures of animal and had them sort the animals into the groups they felt the animals belonged. (pictured below)

Journal Printable: Word Doc , PDF

Carnivore/Herbivore Printable: Word Doc , PDF