A DAY AND NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE
Wee-o! Wee-o! calls the prairie dog. Morning is here!
Are you ready to fly through the day alongside hawks and bees? Creep through the night alongside foxes and skunks? Come spend a day and night on the North American prairie. The clock is ticking … Time to look, listen, and learn!
Every day and every night animals are busy on the prairie. They find food, water and safe places to rest. They have everything they need.
A DAY AND NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE follows a 24 hour cycle of activity, highlighting the role of each animal in its habitat and how the habitat supports a variety of life. The illustrations progress from daylight to darkness to daylight again, visually supporting the progression of activity through the day and night. This book can be read aloud to younger children or an older child can read it alone.
Sidebars on each page spread expand information in the text. Back matter includes a map of grasslands of the world, fun facts, a glossary and index, and a guide to websites appropriate for the age group.
Make an animal classification chart. Divide a sheet of paper into five columns and label sections for fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. List animals in this book in each of the categories.
Animal dioramas, mobiles or collages. Choose a theme such as night or day and create a scene inside a shoebox drawing pictures of animals from this book. Or, glue pictures of animals to heavy paper, cut them out, and hang them from a wooden dowel to make a mobile. Or, glue pictures of animals onto a large piece of paper to make a collage.
Make paper plate masks of animals that live on the prairie.
Draw with chalk on black paper to create pictures of prairie animals who are active at night.
Colorful large cut paper illustrations of animals in their environments fill the pages of this series. The series, geared to early grade readers, describes in a story-like narrative the habitat and its inhabitants. Each spread is about a different hour of the day, a 24-hour cycle. Each time period presents what the animals, diurnal or nocturnal, are doing: waking up, singing, hunting, napping, burrowing, gathering food, interacting, or escaping a predator. There is very brief text on some pages with additional information about the animals; their weight, size, eating habits, and more. A world map showing the location of these different biomes is displayed, and so are fun facts and critical thinking using the Common Core. Glossary. Websites. Index. Recommended Reviewer: Madeleine Zember, Librarian and Special Education Teacher, Midway Jewish Center, Syosset, New York
What happens in the early morning on the prairie? Prairie animals awaken to begin a new day. Prairie dogs sniff fresh air to get a take on whether it is safe to pop out to eat a breakfast of juicy grass. Orb-weaving spiders create webs to catch bugs to keep and eat later. Snakes like king snakes, garter snakes, and rattlesnakes slither through prairie grass. Other prairie animals such as odor releasing skunks, a long-clawed badger, antelope, meadowlarks, turtles, bison, hawks and more are featured in this book as they go about their daily and night time routine shown in a 24 hour cycle of life on the prairie. The book begins at 6:00 a.m. and progresses round the clock until 6:00 a.m. the next day. Common Core goals are available on one page of end material. So is a glossary with words like nocturnal and diurnal. Other resources are also listed and there is a page that answers the question of, "What is a prairie." Fact bars show up on some pages and give additional information to an already informative text that is didactic yet entertaining. Arnold's cut paper illustrations dress up all pages. This is one book in the "Caroline Arnold's Habitats" series. Young readers are sure to like all of the books. Reviewer: Nancy Garhan Attebury; Ages 5 to 8.