50 Wacky Things Animals Do makes kids want to learn about critters

The other week I took 50 Wacky Things Animals Do to our first graders class when I was the mystery reader. Parents, be sure to take advantage of being the mystery reader at your child’s school as often as you can. It’s one of those feelings in the whole parenting thing that really makes you realize that you’re awesome.  We ask the kids to pick a number between 1 and 50; then we turn to that animal’s designation in the book.

The kids then laugh and wiggle in their seats on the floor. Once I get to the animal that they chose I’ll show them the illustration. Most times they’ll identify the animal or at least get close. When they asked for animal 32 they were thrown for a loop. The class yelled “BIRD!”, then “SEAGULL!” and read the first half of the word ‘unflappable’. It sounded like “un..flap a-b-b-b”, “unflappable” I said, as they echoed when they finished sounding out the word.

Animal 32 is actually an albatross. The albatross’ page has unflappable on it due to the animal’s ability to glide for hundreds of miles without flapping its wings. It can even nap while flying as it glides at up to 25 miles an hour.

Did you ever study a foreign language when you were a kid? If you’re anything like me the first words that you really learned and remembered were the bad ones; or the phrases that are good for laughs. For example I know that tu ehr havla fin means “you’re really cute” or something along those colloquial lines in Norwegian.

 

50 Wacky Things Animals Do is like that in the fact that children remember the weird and wacky facts about things. I can go into our 7 year old’s class and ask them what animal cleans their ears with its tongue or who vomits when it’s threatened by another animal? It’s been four weeks since I read this book to them and they still remembered that a giraffe cleans its own ears and that vultures vomit when threatened (so that they can rapidly fly away).

This is a book that you’ll love reading and young readers will enjoy hearing, as well as reading themselves. The art deco, throwback style of the art will make children laugh and the large, square format of the book itself makes it stand out from the rest.

Will reading wacky or disgusting things animals do make children smarter? It certainly makes them want to learn more and discover more possibly disgusting things in nature. It may not motivate them to become a zoologist or veterinarian, but it is much more educational-and helpful than learning colloquial phrases in a language you’ll never use.