Book choices for today:
Baby Animals Moving Suzi Eszterhas
ABC Zoo Borns Andrew Bleiman
Snails and Slugs Elaine Pascoe
Snails Monica Hughes
Sophies Snail Dick King-Smith
How Many Snails? Paul Giganti
Are You a Snail? Judy Allen
Mr. Snail Anne Rasch
A Snail’s Pace Allan Fowler
Zoology: (first circle)
Need for lesson – A picture of a snail, real ones if available, and Parts of a Snail.
Zoology 42
We have been talking about different invertebrate groups of animal. Last month we talked about insects and arachnids. How many body parts do insects have? What about a spider? Today we are going to talk about another group that are called mollusks. Mollusks are animals like mussels, clams, slugs, and snails. Their name means “soft”, because mollusks do not have any skeletons. Many mollusks have shells made of calcium to help protect them. Most mollusks live in the ocean, but some kinds of snails and slugs live on the land. Today we are going to talk about snails, those that live on the land.
The body of the snail is long, moist,and slimy. It has a shell to help protect it’s soft body. If a snail is disturbed it can pull its body back inside the shell.If the weather is dry a snail will pull itself inside the shell and seal it. This protects the snails body from drying up. Snails hibernate in the winter. They are active at night. They do not like hot dry days. They like moist humid days, ones that are cloudy.
Let’s look at a snail. The eyes are on the tips of the tentacles. A snail has two pairs of tentacles on its head. the eyes are on the longer pair.The smaller pair help it to smell and feel its way around. A snail moves by creeping along a flat foot underneath the body. Snails can have different shaped shells. It can be a rounded shell or maybe a flat one. The shell help to protect the snail. What do snails eat? They like to eat living plants as well as decaying ones. They also chew on fruits.
As a baby snail grows its shell grows too. There are some other animals that like to eat snails. Ground beetles, snakes, toads, turtles, and some birds eat snails. Snails can be fun to watch. Have you seen any snails in your yard or other places?
Additional Works:
Snail Shell Counting – A friend of mine, collected these snail shells for me. He found them all in his yard and shared them with me so I made them into a counting work.
Art:
Snail Prints – The children can paint some grass and print snails all over. I believe the snail stamp came from discountschoolsupply.com.
Songs/Poems:
Snails, Snails (by Zane Good)
Snails, snails, are wonderful creatures,
If you look real close you’ll notice fun little features.
They move real slow as they move across the grass,
They leave a slimy trail that shines like glass.
They’re so quiet, even more than a mouse,
What’s really cool is that they carry their house.
Yes, it’s true, their shell is their home,
They always have it, no matter where they roam.
If you try to pick them up, they’ll just hide,
Then you’ll have to get real close, so you can peak inside.
Zoology: (second circle)
Need for lesson – Any baby animals work you would like to have a review with. Ask the children the names of what the babies are called of certain animals. I use the picture cards from Week 30 Day 3 for the review and this picture shows an art project of gluing yellow feathers to make a duckling. I think the duckling picture is from kidssoup.com.
Songs/Poems:
Little Joey (tune- Did You See a Lassie)
I have a little joey, a joey, a joey,
I have a little joey, he lives in my pouch.
I jump up and down, he bounces up and bounces down,
I have a little joey who lives in my pouch!
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