5 Effortless Activities to Ace Animal Structures

Animal structures: how do they work? What’s the 411 on both internal and external structures of animals? Beyond that, what are all those functions?! There’s plenty to learn and explore when it comes to this tricky science concept; in fact, thanks to the mystery of animal structures, you’re reading my blog post!

Okay, so maybe animal structures aren’t nearly as mysterious and unknown as I’m making them out to be. However, to your upper elementary science students, they may as well be! It’s important that kiddos develop a strong, thorough understanding of animal structures and their functions, too–not just to satisfy NGSS, but also to promote awareness of the environment and, of course, to provide a strong foundation for more advanced biological concepts later on in their educational careers.

Tackling such a large science concept isn’t as intimidating as it may sound, either. Sure, there are dozens of unique structures both inside and out of your average animal, but there are plenty of similarities, too! Studying animal structures provides an excellent opportunity for your students to make connections to other science concepts like evolution and common ancestry.

With the why covered, let’s move on to the how. Obviously, you know what I’m gonna say: it’s time to get hands-on! After all, that’s, like, my whole MO. There’s no better way to keep your elementary students engaged than by captivating their attention from the start and making them excited about learning.

Now, use that optical structure of yours to check out these five engaging NGSS-aligned activities to explore animal structures and their functions!

5 Hands-On Activities for Teaching Animal Structures

1. Create a “Who Am I?” Board

“Who am I?” isn’t just a game for Valentine’s Day! In fact, it doesn’t need to be anything huge and fancy, either. You’re busy, your kiddos’ attention spans are limited, and besides, there are a LOT of animal structures to get through. Let’s go with something simple yet reliable: index cards!

For this activity, prepare a slew of index cards with questions regarding internal and external animal structures as well as their functions. For example, one index card may read “I have a long trunk that I use for many things, like eating, drinking, smelling, grabbing, and trumpeting! Who am I?” Then, under the index card, students can find the answer.

Although it’s simplest to tape the index cards up on a board for students to investigate, you can also make this activity more engaging by doing the opposite of the instructions above and encouraging socialization among your kiddos. Take one index card for each student in your class and write a unique animal on each one, then hand them out to your students face-down. They should then tape the index cards to their foreheads without peeking at their animal.

Finally, students will mingle and give one another “clues” about their animal via facts about their structures. Once students feel that they have enough information, they can guess their mystery animal! If they’re correct, students should return to their desks and list all the structures they can think of that their animal has. Then, when everyone’s ready, come together as a class to discuss what animal structures are common and which are more unique.

2. Build-a-Bear (or other animal) Workshop

If you’re looking for something that’s more in-depth and can even double as a STEM project, look no further. This activity is a great opportunity to let students’ creativity and critical thinking skills shine!

To start, provide students with any four-legged animal outline that has been laminated. The type of animal doesn’t matter; in fact, the more plain the animal, the better. Students will be designing “structures” for their animals, so the creatures should be extremely basic to start with–literally just a head, body, and legs. No ears, eyes, paws, or tails!

Then, assign each student an environment. Their task is to create structures for their animal to survive in their specific environment! Since their animals should be laminated, provide kiddos with dry-erase markers to use as well as “structure” materials such as pipe cleaners, glue, masking tape, plastic straws, cotton balls, felt, and so on. Engaging students with a plethora of materials and allowing them to “engineer” their structures really brings out the STEM side of things!

Afterward, have students explain their creature’s structures and go over how they would allow the animal to thrive in their assigned environment. You can do this as a class, in groups, or even with partners. Ask questions that will really engage their critical thinking skills, such as “Why did you choose cotton balls over squares of felt?”

3. Factor in the Food

This activity is another easy one that’ll save you plenty of time (and money)! To go for a more hands-on route, bring in a variety of small food items, such as an apple, an orange, a banana, a peanut, and so on. If you don’t want to spend the money, though, that’s okay–fruit is expensive! Instead, you can just show students images of the food as you talk through it.

Bring your class together and thoroughly inspect each food item. Allow for student-led inquiry by asking open-ended questions, like “How do you eat an apple?” Students will realize right away that you need teeth, but push them to be more specific–what kind of teeth do you use to eat an apple? Could you bite into an apple with only molars? Yes, but it would be more difficult than using our incisors. What about the banana? You should have some sort of structure that’s able to handle the peel, right?

Once you’ve brainstormed all the necessary structures for a few food items, have students group up (or partner up) and go over the remaining food items. Make sure students are considering internal animal structures, too!

4. Factor in the… Feeding?

Next, take the time to compare and contrast two different animals’ digestive systems, such as a cow with its four-chambered stomach and a bird with its gizzard. Obviously, these two animals must have different diets, right? Otherwise they would have the same digestive structure! So what can we infer about the diet of a cow when compared to the diet of a bird based on the differences in their structures?

To kick off this activity, have students draw and label the two different animals’ digestive structures. If the animals have any parts of their digestive structures in common, such as both having a liver, use the same color for them both in order to identify similarities between them.

Once the digestive systems have been compared and contrasted, brainstorm which foods are better suited for each animal. For instance, the cow’s teeth are more suited for grinding plant matter, while a bird’s beak and small stomach is better suited for seeds and berries. After coming up with appropriate diets, show students a few more animals’ digestive structures and have them infer what other foods they eat based on their new knowledge.

5. Anatomy Art

This final activity provides students with a golden opportunity to show off their art skills! Sure, that’s not the main goal here, but it’s nice to let your more creative kiddos shine once in a while.

To get things started, allow students to choose an animal, encouraging unique choices amongst your classroom so you don’t end up learning about a cat’s structures six different times! Have kiddos conduct research on their animals using their textbooks, reading passages, or even websites in order to build those all-important technology skills. Their goal is to figure out what structures, both internal and external, help their animal survive and reproduce.

Then, students will choose what they feel is the most important of all the animal structures to their creature–of course, there’s not necessarily a correct answer here, as all structures are important. It is, however, a great opportunity to have students explain their line of thinking and practice rationalization! Then, have students draw a detailed artistic diagram of that structure complete with labels.

Ultimately, once students have completed their shiny diagrams, have them “teach” the rest of the class (or groups) about their animal and the structure they deemed to be the most important. Animal structures are certainly plentiful, so there should be a plethora of learning going on in your classroom!

Animal structures are key to understanding the environment, diversity in life forms, evolution, and common ancestry, so do your kiddos a favor and help them build that strong scientific foundation sooner rather than later. Engage their cerebral structures with student-led inquiry and hands-on activities baked into your science unit… And don’t forget to check for understanding with structure-specific science writing prompts!

Ensuring your lesson on animal structures align with NGSS while still covering all the important information doesn’t have to be an overwhelming hassle. By taking advantage of students’ natural curiosity and their desire to explore, you can hand over the learning to them and keep them engaged the whole time. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even see a smile when studying these structures!

Which activity is your favorite for learning about animal structures? Do you use any strategies in your classroom that aren’t listed here? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to share this post with a fellow science teacher!