Animal Defenses (Week 9)

manna moment

Genesis 3:21 “And the LORD GOD made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.”  Before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, did animals need defenses?  I don’t think so.  They didn’t need them because there was no death.  However, today, we have a lot of death and animals consume other animals for energy as part of the food chain.  Yet, even though all of Creation deserved death at the Fall, God, in His love, provided 1. Covering and Clothing for Adam and Eve and 2. defenses for the animals like the Texas Horned Lizard. Sometimes we mess up but you can know you are still loved because God will continue to provide for us even when we mess up.

Cooperative Review: Building Towers

Since we have been learning so much about Biomes and Ecosystems, we will be spending a portion of time during class reviewing all that we have been learning in the class.
Today our review game was cooperative.  Each student is asked a review question, either from geography, vocabulary or the biome and ecosystem information given in the last eight weeks.  When they answer, they will get a block.  I am not a stickler about if they answer it right the first time.  The goal is to review and as long as the students are participating, they get a block because we are all still learning.  The important thing is to remain engaged in the learning process.
At the end of the questioning time, I will give them about five minutes to see how tall they can build their towers.
We used Jenga blocks in class and both classes went straight to the game-playing structure and I challenged them to think outside that box.  They did and some were successful.  It was fun.

Read Aloud: Texas Horned Lizards by Emily Hudd

The students and I fell in love with these little lizards.  While they look pointy and scary, they really are magnificent creatures.
This book highlighted about five defenses the horned lizard has and since we live in Texas, this is our state reptile.
There is a reading guide that we read aloud together.  The points to fill in do not come in the order of the book, so as we read we found where to fill in the information.  This was a great way to activate listening.  All the students at the end of class, were able to tell me at least one defense of the horned lizard.

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Animal and plant defense cards

Both animals and plants have defenses.  After the Fall of Man, death entered, yet, God in His goodness did not leave everything to die, but provided defenses as a way of protecting His creation from death.  
This is a matching game where at first, they are to match the animal to the defense.  Then they can scramble and flip the cards over to play a memory game.  Finally, we learned about three types of animal defenses; Fight, Flight, and Trickery.  They can sort the defenses on the cards into these three sections.  Scientists sort and organize information all the time.

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