WTM first-Grade Zoology Review

We just finished 22 weeks on animals. WTM has no specific recommendations on how to organize it; so I pulled out our history "spine", the huge Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia Of World History, and used it to introduce the animals in the order that they first evolved. We would read about the first appearance, discuss how they differed from earlier life forms, then go over to The Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia to read about modern versions of them. When there was more than one choice, or when I felt the area needed more attention, she could pick out specific examples to study. Here's the order I used:

1. Microscopic Animals
2. Jellyfish
3. Worms
4. Shellfish
5. Jointed Shellfish of her choice
6. Fish
7. Fish of her choice
8. Insects
9. Spiders
10. Amphibians
11. Amphibian of her choice
12. Reptiles
13. Reptile of her choice
14. Birds
15. Bird of her choice
16. Mammals
17. Platypus
18. Marsupial of her choice
19. Placental of her choice
20. Placental of her choice
21. Placental of her choice
22. Chimpanzees

They learned a lot about animals and got a basic understanding of evolution. Not bad.

The only supplementary material WTM recommended was some animal coloring books. These looked good, but weren't that useful. These days you can pull a growing number of quality coloring pages of animals off the internet, and we ended up using those more often.

Next up is 10-12 weeks of Human Biology. After spending weeks trying to figure out what to teach and in what order, I had a flash of truly inspired genius and dumped it all on my husband. He's got multiple degrees in Biology and both college and public school teaching experience, he can handle that part.