You may choose to begin this study with a unit on dinosaurs, always of interest to children, before proceeding to mammals. Stick as much as possible to North American mammals, rather than those elsewhere in the world. Start with the most primitive order (marsupials) that occur in North America and continue to those generally considered most advanced. However, you should include animals from other continents, often found in many zoos, that particularly interest children, such as the giant pandas of Asia, carnivores and pachyderms of Africa and India, perissodactlys (tapers, rhinoceroses, zebras) artiodactyls (hippopotamuses, camels, giraffes), and primates of the Old and New Worlds. Allow one week for each order.

Ten pages cover birds, geology, human body, insects, machines and inventions, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, space and astronomy, water, weather and winds.

Lengths/Linear Ranges with activities for children and parents; Imaginary Linear Measurements: Longitude, latitude, Mason-Dixon Line, Equator; Various Measures: Liquids, dry measures, writing-paper quantities; Area; Time: From jiffy to one light year; Previous systems for calculating time: From Kern Sun serpent in southern Ohio, through Maya records, Stonehenge, Avebury Ring, Easter Island, Aztecs, Chinese system of chronology dating; Chronologies (The science that deals with the determination of dates and the sequence of events): chrono-, as prefix and suffix meaning time: 12 examples from anachronism to SYNCOM�; obsidian, the dating stone; 14 Modern-day Size/Length Measures from benchmark - stone; File Size Units from Smallest to Largest: Bit - exabyte; Speeds: knot - light travel; currency exchange.

Eight mathematical questions; example: MR. L. lasted 321 days on the job before he was fired. What percentage of a year did he serve?

Challenge your children or students, while slipping in big doses of cultural literacy and reinforcing basic skills. Use this approach to enrich current studies, to extend students' literacy, and to supply impetus for students to recite poetry, to master difficult spelling words, and whatever else you want them to accomplish but which students might say, "That's too hard!" Memorizing poems not only provides an outlet for the academic energies of the students who attempt them but also increases their memorization skills. These thirty-one poems provide opportunities to reinforce students' knowledge of the effects of sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, or rhyme schemes) and those of personification, metaphor, simile, and hyperbole.

Emphasis on opening everyone's eyes and senses to our surroundings from automobile and sports team names to other parts of our man-made environments' multitude of shapes from water towers to and most especially "The language of buildings." This "language" awakens and deciphers: roof styles, uprights (columns, pilasters, etc.), entablatures, entrances, windows, decorative features, brick types. Fun for classroom students and families.