Our Literary Summer: Week 6 - Desert Night, Desert Day

This week, we read Desert Night Desert Day by Anthony Fredericks.  This story shows the activities of a few nocturnal and diurnal desert creatures through rhyming text and adorable illustrations.

Aside from learning the new vocabulary words 'nocturnal' and 'diurnal' we had fun with a few activities and games:

Sandy Slime

I originally saw this posted here, but set the idea aside because I didn't have any sand sitting around.  After remembering that I had some fine white craft sand in my garage, I decided to give it a try.  It turned out wonderfully sandy and very, very stretchy!  Maybe not exactly like the sandy desert, but still awesome!

Very, very, VERY stretchy!!!

Did you know that Elf Owls live in old woodpecker holes in Saguaro Cacti??  And you can make a tasty owl snack so you don't forget.  We just used bread, but you can also use bagel thins like they did over on Primary Learning Log when they made their owl snacks....they fed their owls grapes, I love that!!

We learned this week that javelina have very poor eyesight, but they use their ears to make up for that.  We used our 'javelina ears' all week and tried to hear lots of different sounds throughout our day.

Need a song that teaches something in a very fun way?  Billy Jonas probably has a song for you!  We LOVE his song Nocturnal to remind us of some of the sounds we might hear from animals who are awake at night.

Desert Tortoise Art

These guys can live over 100 years!!

More desert fun next week!