Vertebrate Puzzles

We have recently received some new puzzles in our classroom.  There is one puzzle for each type of vertebrate.  Some of the children have been very interested in making their own vertebrate page.  They take one of the puzzles to a table and trace each piece.  This is tricky and requires strong fine motor skills.  Some children are not at all bothered to have extra large wobbly pieces for their puzzles but others like a teacher to assist in the tracing so their piece looks like the wooden one. 

After they are done tracing, they cut out the pieces and glue them to a piece of paper.  Once dried, the child retrieves a control card that has the names of the parts of the particular animal.  They use a ruler to make a line and then write the name of the part.  One child decided to make all five pages in one week and assemble into a book!