Thursday, April 1, 2010

eNature- A multisensory wildlife search engine

At the elementary level, 3rd Grade kids at my school always researched trees in the fall and animals of New England in the spring.  eNature is a great way to help kids with this kind of assignment, while providing a multisensory language experience.  The site allows you to search and display the wildlife that lives in your zip code.  I was surprised to find that Horned Grebes live right around the corner from me in good old 02122! I bet your kids would be excited to connect abstract curriculum information to their own backyard.  You are able to listen to animals' sounds (such as bird calls), thus engaging multiple senses. The site requires you to enter an email address, but not to login.


Language Lens:
  • The site is organized by species and provides a good opportunity to review animal categories at a more advanced, curriculum-based level.  Geographic concepts- such as comparing and contrasting the animals found near two different U.S. Cities, would also make a nice lesson
  • Try using the individual plant and animal description pages (which are very schema-based) to practice taking notes with graphic organizers.

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