A World Map Puzzle that gets a lot of use and love around here nearly everyday served as a great launching point for an animal geography exploration the other day. The puzzle has many animals on it and the kidlings love to point out where they each live. From there we moved to our large wall map that we had covered with plexi-glass. We got out our animal classification cards (little images of animals I printed out…easy peasy!) with one of our favorite atlases. This atlas is all organized by animals. It has amazing descriptions of different habitats and the animals that live there, as well as animal directories and classification charts. We love it. We explored our book with our animal cards and placed each animal in its proper location on the map (with a bit of painters tape!). So much fun! 
They have planned wonderful safaris and discovery trips to the continents hosting their favorite animals. We talked about what direction we would need to head to reach certain animals. We talked about the environments that hosted certain animals, and why some couldn’t live where others thrive. We talked about all sorts of things, (some having decidedly nothing to do with animals or maps even!!!!) while looking at our map, exploring our book, and sorting through our animal cards. Of all the ways to look at the world…through the habitats of animals is a fascinating and favorite way in our home (right now at least).
By the way...you can check out both the Wildlife Atlas and the World Map Puzzle on my sidebar. I highly recommend both!
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