Beaver Unit Study

Children love listening to the story of The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver. Though there are aspects of the story that are certainly fiction, much of the story points out ways that real beavers interact with their environment.

After each chapter we discuss what we have learned about beavers and record that information on a chart. Important sentences are then used in center activities. While recording information about Paddy the Beaver we separate the elements of the story that are fiction and non-fiction.
We name our Beaver Puppet Paddy and use him to narrate the story. Not only does it keep children's attention focused on beavers but also can be used to show how narration is used in writing.

Photo Credit:
BeaverSpecht, Friedrich
Buy at AllPosters.com

Both the beaver and a moose live in the same pond. The beaver believes that the pond belongs to him but at the same time, the moose believes that the pond is his. Read this story and discuss what the pond means to each of the animals. Try to look at the habitat from each animal's perspective.

Then use these characters for an exercise in measurement. Research the actual size of a beaver and a moose. Use an overhead projector to blow up an outline drawing of a beaver until it is life size.

Now find out the actual size of a moose and draw the outline on the wall. If you draw the Moose outline in chalk it can later be erased.

Finally, use the beaver to measure how many beaver lengths long a moose is.

Beaver by Specht, Friedrich Available at AllPosters.com
Morning on Lake Sag Available at AllPosters.com

Potting soil, sticks, and water make an exciting hands-on exploratory experience in the Beaver Dam sensory table. Can you make a dam that holds the water in?

Children needs hands-on experiences to understand the world around them. Allowing them to get wet and muddy gives them the opportunity to experience the life of a beaver. The attempt to make their dam waterproof will give them more respect for beavers as well as for engineers who have imitated beavers in making dams.

Photo Credit: Water table
on Flickr, Creative Commons.

Gather the children and come wander down paths where leaves form a carpet, take a peek beneath the stones, and close your eyes as your fingers touch the bark of trees, the softness of moss or test the temperature of a vernal pool. In preparation for daily trips to the beaver pond you can greatly increase your educational experience by listening to WoodsWalk, which is a guided tour of the four seasons in North America.

Written by an expert naturalist, it is a guided tour which talks about animals you might expect to see, the conditions under which they live, and events to look out for. Child begin to notice creatures, signs and habitat features that might otherwise be overlooked. Soon the children sense the presence of unseen animals, recognize sounds, and identify odors.

Children will learn what NOT to touch or taste in the world. WoodsWalk helps with identification of trees, terrain, plants, and wildlife. Take a walk in the woods, visit the beaver pond. Children get to experience the life of an inquisitive young naturalist.

Photo Credit:
Beaver
Buy at AllPosters.com

As the children get better at writing words we begin to put sentences together. Sometimes each child writes one word of the sentence and then we paste the words together. This is similar to the way the beavers work together to build a dam or lodge.

Sentence Puzzle Center

1. Take the sentence: "Beavers build dams."
2. Make two copies on sentence strips.
3. Model how to cut apart each word of one of the sentence strips.

Photo Credit: Beaver Dam on WikiMedia, Commons

4. Mix the words up.
5. Match the words to the original sentence strip.
6. Read the words again.
7. Help children to paste them back in order on another piece of paper.
8. Read the words again.
We just built a sentence similar to the way beavers build dams by working together one piece at a time.

Chorus:
Chew, chew, chew, chew
That's what beavers do, we chew
Slap you tail, shout out loud
I'm proud to be a beaver

For snack time you could serve broccoli. Broccoli resembles trees so your children could pretend to beavers chewing on trees.

Oopsy Daisy Beaver Lodge Stretched Canvas Wall Art by Amy Schimler
Available on Amazon

Create a beaver pond bulletin board where you can display vocabulary words related to the beaver unit study. Add only a few words each week and make sure to print them large enough for your children to read them from where they sit to write. These words will help children spell the words they are learning to use while studying beavers. Some words you might consider posting include:

Beaver Lodge
Beaver Dam
Construction

Bartholomew the Beaver
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Bartholomew the Beaver is a value story about a young beaver that just wants to play and not work.

Photo Credit: Beaver
in the Public Domain

When I am planning a math lesson I first look at the unit study we are working on and try to imagine all the ways that math could be used in relation to the theme. Then I think of the skills that the children need to work on and how they relate back to the theme.

Recently I was working on a Beaver Unit Study. I planned to read a book about beavers that mentioned their length, length of the tail and average weight. To help the children understand these concepts I showed them how to use the cut-out silhouette of a beaver that I had traced from the book on the overhead projector to blow up the picture to it's actual size. I attached a piece of cardboard to the bulletin board and showed the children how to trace around the outline in order to make an actual size cutout. We made two of these. These became a math learning center for children to use to measure the room in Beaver Units.

Then we discussed how much the beaver weighed. (about 40-60 pounds) I showed the children how to weigh themselves on a bathroom scale and compared their weight to that of a beaver. Then, as the next math center, I challenged them to find other things in the classroom that weighed about the same as a beaver.

They were given the opportunity to record their findings by drawing pictures of the objects they had found at the math writing center where we keep a picture dictionary of most items found in the classroom in order to help them spell the words they need.

So to get back to the question, I use scales, overhead projector, beans, books such as Hands-on Math or Mathematics Their Way. I use ideas from books we read but mostly I use my imagination and the imagination of the children to come up with creative hands-on learning centers that invite children to explore their world and record their findings using mathematics.