Good Night Gorilla Unit Study

Well, hello!  I decided to actually start posting again.  It's only been ten months(!) since my last post.  I've been working on all kinds of fun crafts, money saving strategies, and preschool/homeschool lessons and activities.  Now I just have to try to get it all onto my blog...

I was shopping at the D.I. (Deseret Industries, a second-hand thrift store run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and I found an AWESOME book!  I was so excited!  Children's books at the D.I. are usually $0.50-$1.00, but larger books can cost more.  This book was $4.00, but it was worth every penny. The book is The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, and it is a compilation of favorite modern children's books selected by Janet Schulman.  This treasury is chock full of my favorite children's stories:  Madeline, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You, Where the Wild Things Are, and many, many more.  The pictures are smaller than in the regular books, so if you really want the full effect of a story you may want to buy it separately, but for us this is a great way to have 30 or 40 favorite kid books in one volume.  I love it!!!!

One of the stories in the treasury is Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann.  This is an adorable story that is perfect for preschoolers through around second grade.  It has very few words, and the words that are used are repetitive and simple, and the majority of the story is told through the colorful and entertaining illustrations.  I found a printable preschool unit study on http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ to use with this book here.  Click on the blue hyperlink for the printable lapbook activities.  You can pick and choose what activities and things work best for your little ones.  I printed the activity with the different colored cages and the coordinating colors of keys for my preschooler and two-year old to practice matching with.  They loved putting the correct key with each paper cage and opening it to find which animal was hiding inside.  Before doing the activity, we looked at the illustrations and saw how each cage opened with the matching colored key.  Then the kids got to try their cages. 

Another fun activity to do with the book is to read it through, then point at the different animals and see how many your toddler/preschooler knows the names of and what sounds each makes.  There are well known animals like an elephant, a gorilla, and a lion, but there are also a couple of less familiar animals, like a hyena and an armadillo.  You can then play charades and take turns acting like an animal and guessing what kind of animal it is.  Animal cookies would be the perfect snack for this activity, or different foods that animals eat, such as bananas, nuts, berries, meat (not raw, hee, hee), or you could even get animal cookie cutters and decorate animal sugar cookies.

With my older child, we used Good Night Gorilla for a science unit study about animals.  My daughter got to pretend she was a zookeeper.  We read about different kinds of animals in our encyclopedias and online, and then Jasmine drew pictures of animals in a habitat she designed for each animal at her zoo.  For example, one animal Jasmine learned about was a hippopotamus.  She learned what kinds of foods they eat in the wild and in captivity.  The San Diego Zoo has a really fun interactive website that allows kids to learn about animals in the zoo http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals.  Then she drew a picture with water and land for the hippo, and she wrote notes about what foods and activities she would provide to keep the hippos happy and healthy.  This can be expanded as much as you want, and you can put the drawings and/or notes in a folder together at the end to make a nice little book for your little zookeeper (and don't forget to let your kiddo name their zoo!). :o)

You can make the week's spelling list the names of the animals in the books, and any more advanced animal terms you wish to include (reptile, habitat, etc.).  You could also work on journal entries/fiction writing with animal story prompts such as:

• Write a story about what you think animals do when no one is around.
• If you could be any animal, what animal would you be, and why?
• Write about an experience you have had at a zoo or national park.
• If the animals in a zoo could talk to you, what would they say, and what would you say to them?
• Write a story about a giraffe who wanted to roller blade.

Feel free to post any other activity suggestions you have to go along with this book in the comments!  I love outside input!