Today’s book is called What If You Had Animal Ears!? Written by Sandra Markle and illustrated by Howard McWilliam.
I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but my kids were hooked on the image of a girl with koala ears and knew it would be a good book choice for today.
We were visiting family and went to the zoo over the weekend, and this book helps create text- to- real-world connections and text-to-self connections for the kids. As we read the book, they kept wanting to pause to talk about animals from the book that they encountered.
What reading skills can be taught or reviewed while reading this book aloud to children?
- Nonfiction text features
- The connection between text and images
- Cause & effect
- Compare & contrast
- Main idea & supporting details
- Synonyms & word meaning
Key vocabulary words found in this book include;
- Predator & prey
- Sound
- Hearing
- Listening
- Noises
- Silently
- High-pitched sounds
Science Skills in this book include:
- Senses
- Cause & effect
- Animal adaptations
- Endangered, extinct animals
Printable Resources from my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s Homepage
Please click the link HERE for my TPT resources included in this post. This includes a ten page PDF resource with read aloud focus questions as well as follow-up activity ideas inspired by the book. Included in this resource are three different activity handouts designed for children.
What are the animals included in this book?
- Jackrabbit
- Tasmanian devil
- Eurasian red squirrel
- Koala
- Okapi
- Serval
- Townsend’s big-eared bat
- African elephant
- Great horned owl
What are some follow-up activities to learn from after reading What If You Had Animal Ears!?
- Visit a local animal sanctuary, conservation, or zoo.
- Create an animal to human senses compare & contrast graphic organizer.
- Research and learn about animals with varying hearing abilities or alternative ways of hearing.
- Compare and contrast the different ears of animals from observing animals in nature.
- Create a story based on the prompt- What if you woke up with your pet’s ears?
- Use walkie-talkies and play a hide and seek game- listening to clues from buddies for help.
- Play telephone, passing a word from person to person.
- Let child test out their hearing abilities by letting them make noises low and loud and see when they can’t hear the noise any longer. This works with music as well.
- Have kids research more animals in nature with different hearing adaptations.
- Discuss text-to- text connections and read other books in this series by Sandra Markle.
For the handouts used within this post please see my TPT homepage for the resources.
Other blog posts I recommend that connect to this read aloud book include:
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?: We love a good Eric Carle book over here. Please click the link to see activities for this sense-themed book. For more Eric Carle books and related senses activities, please visit my larger author unit about his books here.
Best videos we found about animals and their sense of hearing:
Thank you for visiting Live Learn Literacy
I hope you found the information about the book What If You Had Animal Ears!? helpful for your little readers. I have used this book series with my three,five, and even ten-year-old students. Thank you for visiting, and for more learning ideas, please see my other posts.
