Do you have a yearning to learn more about this rare, unique and amazing mammal? Well, here are all the resources, links, etc that we used to learn about this Australian animal!!

The lapbook:

• Platypus Animal Study and Lapbook by Homeschool Share. Really the only one out there and very helpful.

Books:

• Platypuses by Sara Louise Kras
• Electric Animals by Natalie Lunis (this has a two page piece on the platypus’ ability to use electroreceptors to find food)
• Platypus by Chris Riddell (a story book not a non fiction book)
• A Platypus, Probably by Sneed B. Collard III
• Platypus, A Century-long Mystery by William Caper

Crafty Bits:

• Make your own Platypus on Learn Create Love by using their instructions HERE. We put our legs on with brads and went without the googly eyes.
• Make your own Platypus paperbag puppet using instructions by Danielle’s Place HERE. The cutting is a little advanced on the feet for true preschoolers but we managed!
• We didn’t make it to this craft but it looks fun, make your own Perry the Platypus out of felt and foam HERE.

Colouring Pages

• P is for Platypus HERE.
• Flag of Australia HERE.
• A random Platypus HERE.
• Mommy and baby with eggs HERE. Though the eggs are bigger than they should be etc etc.

Worksheets

• Compare the tracks of various Australian animals HERE.
• Learn a bit about the Platypus and colour one as well HERE.
• Wordsearch for the older kids HERE.
• All about platypus colouring page and fill in the blank riddle HERE.
• Duck Billed Platypus Anatomy HERE.
• Platypus mini book to fill in yourself HERE.
• Platypus notebooking pages with colour image of a swimming platypus HERE.
• Templates that we used for our end of book facts of interest HERE.
• Not so much a worksheet but a POEM!! 4-40 has a great platypus poem HERE.

We have an amazing picture of platypus babies thanks to Facebook via Dr. Carin Bondar – Biologist with a Twist. Keep in mind her Facebook profile HERE does have some more mature content this picture is certainly worth it! The tagline with this picture when it made its way to my timeline is as follows:

Here’s your daily dose of adorable – baby platypuses! There’s no official name for baby platypuses, but they’re often referred to as puggles or platypups.
Platypuses are one of the five extant species of monotreme, meaning that they are mammals that lay eggs. It’s also one of the very few venomous mammals – the male has a “spur” that’s capable of delivering enough venom to kill a small dog.

Babies

Videos:

I will for the most part embed, but some do not allow it. Hopefully these will remain valid videos for some time! Our first video is from youTube subscriber 911TRUTHINATOR and is a longer educational piece on the “World’s Strangest Animal.”

National Geographic and their dangerous hunter themed video. I will warn you, they pump up the platypus to seem scary (??) the kids did NOT approve.

A short video of the Senior Platypus Keeper Ian Elton with Ember the 6 month old platypus.

In Australia, Go Paddling With the Platypus. Seriously… we live on the wrong continent. This video gives a bit of a close look to a playful platypus.

Check out the video below to see a platypus doing platypus things at Mount Field National Park.

Of course there are all the moments of Perry the Platypus on Phineas and Ferb. We specifically borrowed The Perry Files from the library. Wild Kratts also have a platypus focused episode called Platypus Cafe that you can purchase on Amazon.com.

Helpful links:

• Wonder how the platypus got its name? Well Wiki Answers knows right HERE.
• National Geographic Kids Creature Feature platypus HERE.
• KidsBiology.com has a brief page on the platypus HERE.
• Squuidoo has a great fact page HERE.

Part of the lapbook calls for looking at the Echidna who is the other mammal in the Monotreme family. So here are our links that we used to supplement what tiny bit of information we had in our library books!

• EnchantedLearning has a page with an anatomy picture HERE.
• Activity Village has a mini book we used to record what we learned HERE. We took the little file folder shape from the lapbook and made it into a pocket to put our mini book in.
• Kids.net.au has a great Echidna page HERE.

We used two videos with our Echidna. I am warning you now, youTube seems to carry a lot of information on the male reproductive organs of the Echidna. The two videos I have below do NOT cover this aspect as I did not feel that the… uniqueness of this portion of the animal was necessary to our learning.

First a National Geographic Video – World’s Weirdest.

And our second video about an Echidna Puggle at Taronga Zoo. Unlike the platypus, the echidna has an official name for its babies – the puggle.

And that is that! Here are a few of our pages! I hope this comes in helpful. If it does, please send me a message, leave a comment… etc.

Platypus cover

A couple sample pages

And two more

FOR PLATYPUS RESOURCES PLEASE GO TO “PLATYPUS IN DEPTH”

For all our Dr. Seuss resources check out the blog entry: Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

February 25-26

and thank you for enriching our literature and helping the boys WANT to read even more! Yes, Monday marked the beginning of our celebration of all things Dr. Seuss. After all, his birthday is on the 2nd of March! What book to start with… well the library helped me choose that one with the one week rental of the newest Lorax movie. We have touched on recycling and conservation before but I think the kids were REALLY affected by this book. The ending is slightly different than the movie of course and really much sadder. Trinity was especially upset with Once-ler and his lack of care with the trees. She simply could NOT understand why people would be willing to destroy everything and chase away the animals. She felt that it lacked explanation and was just WRONG! I have to agree that is was wrong… and be glad that she sees that straight off. We are doing folders for this unit with activities, For the Lorax we had 3 specific pages… Like the platypus I will also be combining my resources in a separate blog entry!

Gavin and Zander with our starter book

Emanuel and Trinity with two of the worksheets

Echo had her own book too… but this one was only influenced by Dr. Seuss.

Boardbook

The twins made our theme coloured paper chain… the table cloth is blue to round out the Dr. Seuss colours.

Paper chain

Anyway, we also had our platypus to face… a book to finish! AND a video to watch. The Perry Files from Disney’s Phineas and Ferb was a ton of fun! TWO videos to share today! One a brief veiw at a facility where you can SWIM with a platypus!! If only we lived in Australia!

Our second video is a day in the life of a platypus at a national park.

Our book for the day was one that took us two sessions to get through entirely: Platypus, A Century-long Mystery by William Caper. We really enjoyed this one as it focused on the last 100+ years of research with all the problems and bumps along the way.

The last book

We lucked out and got our hands on the Wild Kratts video for the platypus, Platypus Cafe from the first season and while this will go into our Wild Kratts binder and not our lapbook it was a welcome addition to our day. You can actually purchase episodes from this series on Amazon.com or watch a few on PBSkids.

Platypus Cafe

The Perry Files

We had our Pizza Hut reading program pizza today as well!

Well done boys!

It was actually an away day for Ken who was off to work at the office. It was rather different… but I think we did just fine!

Snuggles with Daddy

Don’t forget our outside time!

They built that whole structure

Tuesday was the beginning of assembly day for the kids, AFTER we learned about the Echidna. Sadly most videos are dedicated to the unusual male anatomy they have BUT I got a REALLY cute video of a baby one in a zoo!

I am hoping we will finish our lapbook by tomorrow. I will share the pictures of the whole thing then. In the meantime we continued with Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham. A VERY timely lesson for Miss Trinity with her picky food issues. We all drew pictures from the book and wrote out what this story told us. Earlier in the morning Ken had the boys and Trinity do the same for the Lorax. We also did some word searches and colouring pages.

Playing Green Eggs and Ham tick tac toe

Then Zander read The Foot Book to Emanuel! For Echo it was Hop on Pop. I would love to do all the activities associated with these books online but there just isn’t time! Thankfully I have added the main page with those links onto our reference blog. I DID try and have Gavin read the Green Eggs and Ham book but with the kids all wanting to see pictures I read it to them and he read Echo her book.

Reading together

Tomorrow it is The Cat in the Hat! Should be fun!! We have a craft or two and everything. When we got through the bulk of schooling I let the kids watch PBS. We lucked out – Electric Company AND a new (to us at least) Wild Kratts. Who doesn’t want to know more about the Colossal Squid and the Sperm Whale?

Wild Kratts

So life is good where learning can be found and we are learning left right and center!!!

With a little fresh air as well… that is a jump that Emanuel built for the neighbours dog to jump off of