Zoology II, Week 3: Lion, White-Tailed Deer

Here are some notes from our third week of Zoology II.

Zoology II, Week 1: Birds, Rodents

Zoology II, Week 2: Black Bear, Red Fox

Monday, May 13

• review Red Fox facts, spend more time on fox drawing lesson with block beeswax crayons (Drawing Simple Animal Forms, page 9), add drawings and summaries to MLB
• look at carved wooden animals and compare the shapes of the Fox and the Lion
  
• read chapter 13, "The Lion," from The Human Being and the Animal World by Charles Kovacs

  

Tuesday, May 14 - Field Trip to the St. Louis Zoo

Thursday, May 15

• recall Lion, read portion of Cats by Wilfrid Swancourt Bronson, look at diagram "Showing How Cats' Claws Are Held In Or Thrust Out"

  

• read Young Lions by Toshi Yoshida
• add Lion to MLB (one child came up with a great idea for an illustration for this... a large grassland of yellow, orange, and brown dried grass with the caption "the lion is completely camouflaged")
• introduce Ruminants
• read pages 5 (bottom paragraph) through 12 of Horns and Antlers by Wilfrid Swancourt Bronson, look at diagram "A Ruminant Stomach"

  

Friday, May 10

Morning

• look at the Seventh fact from Cow by Jules Older and identify errors in the diagram of the cow's stomach

  

• play Ruminant / Not a Ruminant with the wooden animal collection and make a display of the two groups
  RUMINANT

  

  

  
  NOT A RUMINANT

  

  

  

Some of these were hard and some were easy to sort. We know that ruminants eat plant material, and we also know these animals are are prey (not predator). They evolved the Market Basket and other three stomachs so that they could grab a bunch of food quickly without chewing it and then retire to a safe hidden spot to chew their cud and digest the food in peace.

In fact, ruminants are cloven-hooved cud-chewers. I didn't have a goat figure, but that could also have been added to that group. Pigs, on the other hand, have cloven hooves but do not chew a cud. Camels chew a cud but do not have a cloven hoof. Donkeys, horses, and zebras are easily confused with ruminants because they are herbivores but no... they are monogastric. And the others (squirrel, pink flamingo, mouse, mole) were just for fun!

Afternoon

• review and add the Four Stomachs of the Ruminant to MLB
• read Horns vs. Antlers (remainder of Horns and Antlers chapter 1)
• look at and feel horn and an assortment of white-tailed deer antlers
• read chapter 6, "The Red Deer," from The Human Being and the Animal World by Charles Kovacs

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