School-Age: Animal Friendships

This week we read the book "Wolfie the Bunny". I loved the book and wanted to share it with my school-agers but was initially stumped as to what else to share at the program as an educational element that would go hand-in-hand with the book. And then I had an inspirational moment when I remembered strange animal friendships. Surprisingly (or maybe not) there are a TON of them!

1. Reading
As I mentioned, we read "Wolfie the Bunny" by Ame Dyckman. It is truly a WONDERFUL book and a hilarious read aloud. The kids loved it! 

2. Discussion

Since "Wolfie the Bunny" is about a bunny family that takes in a wolf -- which would technically be its natural predator -- we discussed strange animal friendships (and adoptions). I shared the book "Unlikely Friendships for Kids: The Dog and the Piglet and Four Other True Stories of Animal Friendships" by Jennifer Holland. I had initially found the book "Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom" by Jennifer Holland and did not realize she wrote ones specifically intended for kids. What a happy surprise! 

 

I read aloud the story about the 'The Hippopotamus and the Goat' from the "Unlikely Friendships for Kids", as well as the story about 'The Iguana and the Cat'. Then I shared pictures and mentioned the basics of some of the stories from both the kids version and the adult nonfiction version that I had sticky-noted to share. 

'The Hippopotamus and the Goat' story was hilarious and had the kids cracking up. I think it was partly to do with the fact that a hippo, the size of a car, broke down a door to try to sit on his families living room couch. But the kids enjoyed hearing stories about bizarre animal friendships and they were fun for me to learn about as well!

3. Craft

For our craft, since we first read the book about "Wolfie the Bunny", I found a craft making a bunny out of hearts. I thought it would be fitting since Valentine's Day is next week. Housing a Forest blog has several heart-shaped animal crafts and even supplies the templates. I used their template for the bunny craft, printed them out on about four or five different colored cardstocks, and had my teen volunteers cut them out. 

Since we used a lot of different colors (and pieces), I had the teens distribute the pieces in plastic baggies. After the pieces were cut it was like trying to put together a puzzle piece. I wanted the kids to have two-toned/colored bunnies and wanted the puzzle pieces to be a pre-packaged craft to hand to them since it would have been way too difficult to distribute the pieces the day of.

I also had my teens make a sample of the craft. This is what theirs looked like:

It's not quite as cute as the template on Housing a Forest, but it worked. 

Notes:

The kids enjoyed putting theirs together. It, again, was more difficult than I anticipated for the kids to figure out how the pieces came together, but I feel as though I'm doing my part in giving them something that uses their problem-solving skills and works on literacy and fine-motor skills. Another successful and fun program that the kids enjoyed, as did the parents and us as staff.