Science Week 7: Mammals

Apparently Blogger ate my draft for the past couple of weeks. Figures. I wasn't online to catch it, so Blogger got wonky on me. Live and learn.

Week 7 began our 12 week Mammal study. Now, considering we are almost daily coming in with new mushrooms (remember way back to Weeks 1 and 2?), and the collection of mosses and lichens is still growing in my window (yeah, that was Week 4). I have no delusions that Mammals will last a mere 12 weeks.

What I did for our first dabble into Mammals was turn our science book into an ebook of sorts. I selected the main notes we needed, added some Google images and printed it off so everyone had their own booklet for our study. Using a hardbound science book like we are (Rod & Staff's God's Marvelous Works, book 2), and having 6 full time students and 1 teaching assistant, I only have one book to go around. I should probably find a couple more, but so far this has worked for us. Printing off the selected passages, adding our own notes and finding some images online worked perfectly for us. I'm not sure of the copyright issues, but
I'll pass our PDFs along as we make them. I lay no claims to the information in them. Anyone with Internet access and interest can easily find the same information available, I merely tucked it together into something that works for our family.

At SCRIBD: Week 7 Mammals PDF
At Google DOCS:  Mammals 1 PDF

Bear in mind, I don't make ebooks, I don't upload things online, I am totally clueless here. If something isn't right, definitely let me know and I'll pretend I have a clue as to how to fix it for you, LOL.

Some Notes:
Mammals and birds are the only two warm-blooded, vertebrate classes of animals on Earth.
Vertebrates are any living creature with a backbone.
Mammals have a physical structure more in common with man than any other animal.
Mammals are animals, but not every animal is a mammal. Insects, reptiles, and birds are animals but are not mammals.
Mammals have hair, usually a thick growth, though some (elephants and whales) have sparse hair. Each hair grows from a pit in the skin. The individual hairs have a small muscle at their root that enables them to be raised, such as in fear or anger when an animals lifts its hair on end.
Some hairs have sense organs. These usually grow around the eyes and mouth.
Mammals feed their babies milk.
Mammals have live birth. Some reptiles, some fishes, some amphibians, and some insects give birth to living young as well, but only 2 mammal species lay eggs. The only vertebrates that never bear live young are birds.

Here is a great collection of Mammal Characteristics from About.com
Basic Mammal Groups
Kidzone Mammal interactive pages
National Geographic Mammal Pages
San Diego Zoo pages, Mammals and other animals
MIKIDS pages
EarthLife pages for mammals (links to additional pages at the bottom of their page)
Exploring Nature pages
Mammals of Arkansas coloring book PDF (here are books for Birds, Fish, and MudBugs)

The Burgess Animal Book, free to read online, audio download, and at Project Gutenberg.  The blog, Teach Beside Me has a great post of links to use as a Burgess Animal Book for Children reading companion as well.  Definitely worth visiting!
List of Science-related lapbooks at HomeschoolShare you might add to your mammal studies. To narrow it down, here is the Animal page.
Lapbook Lessons Mammals pages
Links to All Things Free for Homeschoolers blog page of zoology
eNature mammal field guide
A nice Squidoo page on mammals

And of course, check out CurrClick for several great resources!