"Animal Parts" Just Sounds Kind of Gruesome

My first grade students and I started our "Here Come the Animals!" unit on Thursday. Last year when I taught this unit, I had a full-size classroom with multiple whiteboards, so I used one of those whiteboards and drew several animals and labeled the parts. The plus side of this was that I could erase, change, and quiz the kids. The downside was, of course, that other classes and even my other, older classes were obsessed with erasing bits and parts of the animals so that I was constantly redrawing the turtle's leg, the cat's head, etc.

This year, since I teach in what used to be an office space and share with a couple of colleagues, we do not have the luxury of writing things on the board and leaving them there for two weeks. Still, I wanted the animals with their labeled parts posted somewhere in the room. Unfortunately, this meant I had to make a poster. The plus side is that no one is going to erase parts of the animals. The downside is that I cannot redraw or unlable things as needed. Also, I had to choose a heading and stick with it.

My heading choices, as far as I could figure, were "Animal Parts" or "Parts of Animals", but the more I thought about either of these choices, the more I became convinced that they were both gruesome. Whenever I said one of the possible headers in my head, my mind automatically conjured up gory images of disconnected, bloody stumps of animal legs, paws, wings, and beaks floating in space. Some might say I need psychiatric help, but really I just try to head off issues with my students.

It was eventually decided that "Parts of Animals" was far less gory, and the project was begun. Because I am lucky enough to have an awesome boyfriend, he spent about two hours today working with me on this poster. Sprawled out on the hardwood floor with markers, books, and pencils, we worked hard to represent different animals and include decent animal part vocabulary. Fortunately for me, Mr. Sturm is a much better artist than I am. Unfortunately for me, Mr. Sturm is a much better artist than me, and he saw me draw. The last animal we put on the poster was the bear, and I was having such a hard time (Too fat. Not fat enough. Why does he have his legs like that? He looks part lion. etc.), Mr. Sturm took the pencil and completed the back half and the face of the bear.

Take a look at the poster below and see if you can tell which animals I drew and which Mr. Sturm drew. The bear was part me, mostly him, but other than that, I drew four, he drew three, and we both worked on one other.

Give up? Answers below:

Cat: McDougalhopper
Dog: McDougalhopper
Horse: Sturm
Bird: Sturm
Duck: Sturm
Elephant: McDougalhopper
Fish: McDougalhopper
Turtle: Joint effort. The reason he looks like he has been run over can be credited to me.

I'm lucky to have someone who is just as happy to draw animals on a poster with me as go out. I'm also lucky (and so are my students) that he happens to be a decent drawer. My elephant is pretty good though, right? I'm pretty proud of that slightly crazed elephant.

In other news, I got flowers!