Invent an Animal

So it is cloudy and rainy here so I thought today would be a great day for an inside, crafty kind of activity. I think a version of this activity can be found in the Project Learning Tree Activity Guide, but I am not positive about that. I taught this to several classes of fifth graders back in college and it was a huge hit, messy, but a lot of fun!

This one can be super simple for little ones or can be a great learning tool for older kids (the fifth grade type age). With older kids I give them some guidelines for what their animal has to be able to do, examples would be fly, live in the water, eat ants, climb trees, dig holes, eat fish, run really fast, etc. Then give them a ton of different supplies starting with clay or playdough for the body usually is the easiest and then they can add things like pipe cleaners, tooth picks, feathers, beads, Q-tips, string, cotton balls or whatever else you might have laying around the house. Using all the materials they have to try and create a NEW animal that can do the things you told them. You can combine lots of different characteristics or just do one at a time.

The learning part of this activity is teaching them about adaptations. Animals (and even plants!) have things called adaptations which are something that an animal has (something physical on their body like a long neck) or something that an animal does (like flying) that helps them to survive in their habitat. The activity encourages the kids to examine what kind of adaptations it takes to be able to move certain ways, eat certain things or live in certain conditions.

If you are doing this with younger kids I would skip the guidelines part all together and just let them experiment with inventing their own animal with all the supplies. As they are building you can ask them questions to get their imagination going about where their new animal might live, how it moves, what it eats, what might eat it, etc. This way they are still learning and creating just in a simpler fashion.

My two year old is not quite ready for this activity yet or I would have tested it out and taken some pictures. I promise very soon to do describe an activity on here that I can SHOW you all!!