Functional Parts

We have been doing a Steve Jenkins author study while we are doing our animal inquiry.  Steve Jenkins is such a great author and illustrator (and often works with Robin Page on his books), and we have really enjoyed his books.

These are just a few of our favorites:

By studying his books, Steve Jenkins has taught us to to think in different ways about animals.

Steve Jenkins calls them "Creature Features" and Wild Kratts call them "Creature Powers."  Any way you describe it, animals have cool functional parts!

What parts do you see on these animals that help them survive?

We watched a special video about an owl and the special features it has for hunting.

 You might also enjoy this video: 

After watching the owl hunting video, we labeled as many functional parts as we could.

This is how our work turned out:

We went our to do our research and noticed functional parts of animals.  We drew lots of diagrams and labeled their functional parts.

Watch the video below to see our finished diagrams:

 We have even been inspired to measure out the actual sizes of animals!  We learned from Steve Jenkins that the tallest animal is a giraffe, measuring up to 19 feet tall.  We laid out rulers on the floor and then lined up.  We realized that a giraffe is even taller than our line is long!

If you're interested to learn more about Steve Jenkins and his artwork, click on the video below!

Thank you, Steve Jenkins!