Another note here to mention that both my kids have been doing biome work since they were in Kindergarten. The background knowledge they’ve gained through Montessori lessons and work allowed us to cover the mapping portion of this major subject in just one day.
Today the kids got a brief review of biomes, via the Six Major World Biomes presentation I downloaded for free from Twinkl. Every month or two Twinkl sends out an email with a link to download a free resource of your choice. They also run free unlimited download days once a year or so. I download a lot of their resources on these days, and often don’t use them, but every once in a while there’s a gem to be had.
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We briefly looked at a world climate map and a world biome map (also part of a Twinkl resource), and noted that they are not identical.
Then, I gave each kid a printout of the continent closest to their island (blank continent maps printed from patternuniverse.com). They used their previous island work as a reference, and drew their island in the appropriate place.
Finally, using library reference books, they colored the biome zones of their continent, and decided on biomes for their island. Most atlas/biome non-fiction reference books will work, but as a start, here are the books I had on hand:
Climate and Biomes World Book
National Geographic Student Atlas
Where on Earth? by DK
Biomes & Ecosystems by Barbara Davis
What is a Biome by Bobbie Kalman
The Wonderous Workings of Planet Earth
Initially I was going to print out the Waseca biome blackline masters (they’re free!), but I don’t have their biome puzzles/other materials and every single book or resource I have lists the biome names and draws the borders slightly differently. I decided it would be less confusing for the kids to draw the biome borders in themselves, and to decide if they wanted to use the biome names in their particular reference book, base them on the presentation, or on their own prior knowledge. We talked about this, and most of the kids went with whatever their particular reference book showed.