How to Make Animal Canisters for Animal Study Projects

Helping your kids to learn all about animals can be a lot of fun. Projects are a great way to help the information stick into a child's mind. Animal canisters can really be a lot of fun and are pretty easy to make. First you will need to gather the following materials. Old paper towels, and toilet paper tubes, printable of the animals that you are going to be learning about, small sized Ziploc bags, construction paper, scissors, and glue. Once you have gathered all of the materials you can get started on your animal study project.

To get started you will want to have your child cut out the animal printable that you are learning about. For example if you are learning about birds, than you will have a bunch of bird printables. Have your child color the birds, and cut them out. It is a good idea to get a long list of printables that shows the animal in different stages. For example with the bird you can start with the picture of the egg, and work way up to a grown bird.

In order to show the growth of the animal your learning about you will take the smallest tube (empty toilet paper roll), and glue the first picture to it. The first picture should show the animal when they are first born. It may take you some time to find the pictures online, which is why I suggest using the weekends to prepare for this project. Once your child has cut out the picture and glued it to the small toilet paper roll you will need to close up one end of the tube. Take the construction paper, and glue it to one end of the toilet paper roll. While this is drying you can work on the next tube. The next tube will obviously be a bigger size. You will want it to be at least a few inches large than the first size. You can cut down a regular paper towel roll to find the right size.

For the second stage you will follow the same steps that you did for the first. Have your child color the picture, cut it out and glue it onto the roll. You will also need to cover one end of the toilet paper roll as well. Continue on this process until you have reached the adult stage.

The next step is to cut out little squares of construction paper. You will want to find some interesting facts about each stage of the animal. Have your child write the information on the small square piece of the construction paper. Use a ruler to create the lines on the construction paper to help your child write down the information.

Next go on a nature walk around the neighborhood along with your Ziploc bags, See if you can find anything in nature that shows signs of your child after a particular stage. If you are learning about an animal that your child can not touch, tack pictures using a digital camera. If you are researching a bird for example, take a picture of the nest, the eggs, and some worms to show what they eat. You can then upload these pictures to your computer, shrink it, and print it out. Then have your child cut out the picture and place it in the Ziplock bag. The Ziploc bag goes into the matching tube. At the end of the week you can review all of the information that you have gathered in your tubes. These canisters can be saved for review at the end of the school year. Or you can take pictures of the completed canisters and place them in your school scrapbook, and then get rid of the project when done.