HOW ANIMALS PREPARE FOR WINTER
Introduction.—Discuss the preparations that people make for winter, such as the storing of food and the providing of warmer clothes and homes.
Method.—The teacher questions the pupils and encourages them to tell what they have learned through their own observation of animals. The knowledge of the pupils is supplemented by information given by the teacher, but the pupils are left to find out more facts by further observations. Thus:
Do you ever see ground-hogs out during winter?
What do they feed upon during the winter?
What is the condition of ground-hogs in late summer and in autumn?
What is the use of the great store of fat that they have in their bodies?
Examine the snow near the burrows of ground-hogs and find whether they ever come out in mid-winter.
To the teacher.—The hibernating animals prepare a home or nest and lay up a store of food in the form of fat within their bodies. To hibernate does not mean the same as to sleep. The hibernating animals have much less active organs than the sleeping animals. The heart-beat and the respiratory movements are very slow and feeble, consequently a very little nourishment suffices to sustain life.
SUMMARY OF LESSONS
(Two lessons of twenty minutes)
1. Some animals migrate:
Examples—many birds, butterflies, and some bats; the cariboo, and buffalo.
2. Some animals hibernate:
Examples—bear, ground-hog, raccoon, frogs, toads, snakes, and some bats.
Note.—Flies, mosquitoes, and some other insects crawl into crevices and remain at rest during winter, but their bodies are not stored with food.
3. Some animals build houses and store foods:
Examples—beaver, squirrel, chipmunk, honey-bee, deer-mouse.
4. Some animals build homes convenient to food:
Examples—musk-rat, field-mouse.
5. Some animals put on warmer clothing:
Examples—fox, mink, otter, rabbit, horse, cow, partridge, chickadee. The rabbit and weasel turn white, a colour protection.
6. Many insect larvæ form cocoons or pupæ cases:
Examples—emperor-moth, codling moth, tomato worm.
CORRELATIONS
With literature, reading, and language.
With geography: By a lesson on "The influence of climate upon animal and plant life."