At home, we like to draw and paint self-portraits. I've been thinking of ways to encourage my child to see the details in his face and to notice features like eyebrows and eyelashes, things that were missing from his drawings.

I set him up with a mirror so that he could look closely at his own eyes. We used a simple eye diagram to identify parts of the eye at a preschooler level. It's a good reminder to use correct and accurate terms with our children, a four-year-old can absolutely learn iris and pupil! 

Then together we tried observational drawings of eyes only, around 10-20 drawings over 2-3 weeks. And just like that, he started to put eyelashes on his drawings and sometimes eyebrows too.

To learn about the eyes of animals we cut out images from magazines. We have a National Geographic Kids subscription so we have a large stack of magazines and great animal images to choose from!! The variety of eyes we found was fantastic. We use lots of descriptive words and talked about the eyes, their shape and colours, as we found them. 

Here we are using Montessori 3 Part Cards - Types of Eyes (at TPT), but I've printed the eye images only for matching work. It's so interesting. 

Whose Eye Am I? by Shelley Rotner is THE BEST book for learning about animal eyes - for preschoolers to primary. The photographs are all fantastic, clear, colourful and obviously real. It's a good follow up to using the Types of Eyes matching cards as it briefly explains why animals have different types of eyes and how light and pupils work. 

The explanations and descriptions are perfect for my preschooler.

There are 'Who am I?" pages, you turn the page to find out the answer. 

Whose Eye Am I? belongs in Montessori 3-6 classrooms and homes!! 

Eye to Eye: How Animals See the World by Steve Jenkins is also good for learning about animal eyes. It profiles different animals with Steve's illustrations.

Eyes are so complex, the challenge has been to allow my child to learn about eyes in an age-appropriate and fun way. 

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