In the Create Your Own Animal project, a student creates a never-before-discovered animal and develops a report about this animal. The child can use drawings, charts, graphs, models, dioramas and written description in the report. All aspects of the animal should be reported, such as appearance, diet, habitat, life cycle, community structure, hunting or foraging habits, population status, other organisms the animal interacts with, and how the animal and its environment is impacted by changes in the environment.
To make the project even more challenging, have the student report on the animal during a classroom presentation. Classmates could prepare questions about the animal and its environment to be answered after the presentation.
Similar to the Create Your Own Animal project, students could also develop a report and presentation on a living animal for a biodiversity project. By creating charts, graphs, illustrations, written descriptions, models, dioramas or multimedia presentations, students could educate other classmates about their particular animal.
The species' name -- both common and scientific -- the scientific classification, native and adopted habitats as applicable, how humans' presence impacts the animal, and how the animal contributes to its environment and the other species it lives with are all relevant elements students could discuss in a report.
Creating a species charades game is a fun project for artists, performers and anyone who loves to play games. Children could make a list of the different animals studied in class. They could also include species familiar to most children, such as dogs and cats. For each species, the children could make a charade card describing and naming it. The description could include the animal's diet, appearance, habitat, other species it interacts with and behaviors particular to the animal.
Species charades is played like regular charades except that the performer takes a species card, reads it and then acts out the description written on the card.
Particularly ambitious students or classes could make terrariums. Terrariums are miniature biomes where only a few species live. A terrarium might include plants, fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, arachnids, crustaceans or gastropods. The environment might have a section of water and an area of sand, or only water, or a type of sand or dirt. The terrarium case can be purchased from a store, made inexpensively from products found at a home and garden store or can be constructed using items found around the house, like large jars.
Once the terrarium is constructed, students may need to keep the environment clean or may need to feed some of the species, depending on the biome inhabiting the terrarium. Students can observe and record how the species interact, behave, thrive or struggle.