Do you remember having a class pet or growing silkworms in public school? You don’t need to have a farm to teach the importance of caring for animals and to learn about life cycles of plants and animals.
Plants and animals play a tremendous role in our ecosystem and we couldn’t live without them. Learning about oxygen, photosynthesis, life cycles, and how things grow can be done in hands-on ways using plants and animals in our homeschooling
Experiments are a fun way to learn. Kids can put a bean in a wet paper towel in a plastic baggie, tape it to the window, and wait for the bean to sprout. They can learn about how plants get energy by putting a carnation or a celery stalk with leaves into a cup of water and food dye. They can learn about the vascular system of plants by looking at leaves under a microscope.
To learn about life cycles, kids can observe tadpoles in a nearby pond. Insect Lore sells a variety of insects to observe and learn about life cycles - caterpillars, ladybug larvae, praying mantis egg cases, ant farms, and more. Watching a caterpillar go through its metamorphosis to transform into a butterfly for the first time is awe-inspiring, and doing it in person is a whole different experience than reading about it in a book.
So whether you’re raising animals on a farm and learning about the responsibilities of caring for them, tending to a large garden, growing basil in your windowsill to clip for dinner, or observing ladybug larvae as they go through their life cycle , having plants and animals is a great way to enhance homeschool learning while teaching valuable skills.
4-H Free Activity Guides & Low-Cost Curricula https://4-h.org/about/4-h-at-home/
Butterfly Growing Kit https://amzn.to/40YUnpG
Ladybug Land Kit https://amzn.to/3Ki3ueS
Praying Mantis Egg Case With Hatching Habitat Cup https://amzn.to/3lBJWrI
Uncle Milton Giant Ant Farm https://amzn.to/3Xxhh4r
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