Animals and their continents geography activity

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I previously posted about several simple Montessori continents activities I did with my kids to help them learn the continents. Since my kids have been enjoying our geography lessons so much, I decided to continue the learning with this activity about animals and their continents.

The goals of this activity were twofold: First, to reinforce the names and locations of each of the seven continents, and second, to help my kids understand that different animals can be found on each continent.

Both QBoy and XGirl ended up enjoying this activity quite a bit. I hope your children will enjoy it just as much, should you choose to introduce it to them as well.

Note: You can find more Montessori geography activities on my Geography Unit Study page.

To introduce the concept that different animals can be found on each continent, we started by reading the book Montessori: Map Work by Bobby George and June George.

This is a lovely Montessori book that introduces the continents and their native animals in a very basic manner. My kids particularly enjoy running their fingers along the textured edges of the continents in the book. My main gripe about this book is that it does not use the same colors for the continents as those most commonly found in Montessori materials.

After reading the book together, I presented my kids with a stack of animal cards from my Montessori Animals and their Continents Printables set.

We laid them on the ground and looked at them to see which ones they were familiar with and which ones were new.

My kids noticed right away that some of the animals on the cards were the same ones we had just read about in the book.

I brought out the control map from our Montessori world map puzzle with control maps set, and I invited the kids to place the animals on the appropriate continent.

Many, but not all, of the animals on their cards were included in our Montessori: Map Work book, and they frequently referred to the book to determine which continent an animal belonged to. They spent quite a bit of time happily engaged in this activity.

In the end, they placed all 42 animals on our map!

Note: I printed the animal cards at a reduced size to make them quite small so they would fit more easily on our map. If you print the cards full size they will be much larger than shown in these pictures.

I am making my Montessori Animals and their Continents printable available to download. In one download you will find four different versions:

Cards with both pictures and labels, with different colored outlines for each continent (the colors match those on this Montessori world map puzzle)
Cards with both pictures and labels, with black outlines
Separate picture and label cards that can be cut apart, with different colored outlines for each continent (the colors match those on this Montessori world map puzzle)
Separate picture and label cards that can be cut apart, with black outlines