Temperate Forest Biome Unit

We have finally reached the end of our Biome unit study! It has been a very educational and fun unit to cover with our girls. So far we have covered the Rainforest, Tundra, Grasslands, Desert, and Marine biomes. That leaves Temperate Forests to cover this week.

We had a bit of a leg up on this unit since we live in a temperate forest! A lot of the information was a review for the older girls but I tried to add in some new information throughout the unit. I started out at my go to location for kid friendly facts, duckster.com and made up some simple fact sheets. I included the locations,  animals,  plants, and climates of the temperate forests.

We were not able to find a Magic Tree House book the covered the temperate forests. I guess since the story is set in a temperate forest in Pennsylvania the author didn't feel the need to travel to another forest in the time traveling tree house to learn about the habitat. We did however read our food chain book What If There Were No Grey Wolves and studied our library copy of National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia.

Since we live in an actual temperate forest this weeks field trip was super easy. We walked out of our front door and 100 yards down out street to the State Forest that surrounds out home.

We found several different types of mushrooms, moss, grasses, and of course trees.

 We didn't have a lot of luck finding animal tracks since it is fall and the ground was covered in leaves and pine needles. We did however find a former Beaver habitat. I loved the look of amazement and excitement I saw on the girls faces when they found the signs that the Beavers had been there making dams.

Total for this unit was $8.50 for our food chain book. If you are studying the Temperate Forest I would love to hear all about it!