Monday, February 5, 2018

Waseca Biomes Africa Cards

The masters for all of these are available free for download on their website.

I am taking a few minutes to list all of the cards for each biome in Africa, since my elementary students are using this material as their primary resource for their research. The second I saw "baobab" and "goliath frog" I immediately started thinking of other books and resources! So here is the complete list of the cards in the Waseca Biomes Africa Cards set, and if you know of another book or resource which would go with one, let me know!

And let me just say... I'm really excited for my new Africa Stencil to arrive!!!!


Wetlands

invertebrate - mosquito

fish - West African knifefish

amphibian - reed frog

reptile - Nile crocodile

bird - African jacana

mammal - hippopotamus

plant - papyrus

people - the fellah of the Nile Delta


Tropical Forests

invertebrate - giant African snail

fish - African leaffish

amphibian - goliath frog

reptile - gaboon viper

bird - African pitta

mammal - okapi

plant - mahogany

people - the Efe pygmies


Grasslands

invertebrate - red locust

fish - Egyptian mouthbrooder

amphibian - South African rain frog

reptile - pancake tortoise

bird - secretary bird

mammal - cheetah

plant - baobab

people - the Maasai


Deserts

invertebrate - Namib Desert beetle

fish - West African lungfish

amphibian - Mauritanian toad

reptile - webfooted gecko

bird - sandgrouse

mammal - fennec fox

plant - welwitschia

people - the !Kung


Mountains

invertebrate - mountain beauty

fish - sucking barb

amphibian - natal ghost frog

reptile - Essex mountain lizard

bird - golden-winged sunbird

mammal - hooved hyrax

plant - giant groundsel

people - the Konso


This material is really nice because it gives kids a starting point for what is a pretty big topic... the interesting plants and animals and peoples of Africa!

I also 100% appreciate that the plant and animal information cards each give the full scientific name of the species at the bottom. This means if you are looking up other sources, you can be sure that your other resources are talking about the same thing. For example, I found a reference to the giant African land snail in Can We Save the Tiger? and I knew that the Tropical Forest Invertebrate was called something pretty similar. By double-checking the biome card, I could see that the scientific name was Achatina fulica and confirm that, yes, this book is referring to the same snail which one of my students is researching. And so I promptly checked it out from the library.

Obviously there are lots of other interesting things to research about Africa... and I will be excited to see how this main lesson block unfolds. One child spent much of the morning working on laying out and organizing The Human Evolution Card Set from Clocca Concepts, because he particularly wanted to do a report on an early hominid whose fossil remains have been found in Africa, and he needed to look at all of the possibilities and choose one.

By the way, if your child wants to research other African animals and add new three-part cards to the nomenclature, Waseca has created a PDF template, already color coded for the continents, which is free to download.


This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

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