Animal Mini Book Project

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We’ve been using the Jot it Down program from Brave Writer for part of our Language Arts studies.  It has turned out to be a fantastic fit for our family. I’ve been very pleased with the work our girls have done and the effort they’ve put into these projects. They’ve really taken ownership of these projects as something they want to do instead of just another assignment.  One of the most memorial projects was when my oldest created an animal mini book project back when she was 7 years old. There is such a fantastic story behind this book that I must share it.

She had been obsessed with sloths for some time, so the type of animal was an obvious choice. We went to the library and checked out every sloth book on the shelf and requested several more. We ended up using 10 books written for younger kids.

 

The Process

Over two weeks we read through all of the books and took notes of different facts that she wanted to include in this animal mini book project. I sometimes prompted her, but for the most part she identified which facts she wanted on her own. She put the facts into her own words and I wrote down her thoughts on Post It notes exactly as she dictated them to me. We used them as bookmarks in case we wanted to find that part of the book again.

After we made it through all the books, she categorized the notes. She laid the Post Its out on the dining room table and grouped them into categories such as habitat, appearance, diet, predators and defenses. Once the groups were finished, she stuck them to a piece of paper to keep them all in place.

Next, she picked out some pictures from the books that she wanted to include in her book. She looked for pictures that illustrated the different categories. We made copies of the pictures and she glued them onto card stock to start a page or two for each category.  (**I wasn’t thinking about posting this while we were doing the project.  Unfortunately, I didn’t note which books these photos came from so that I could give proper credit.)

 

 

She could’ve written the pages herself, but it would’ve really extended the project.  Instead, I typed them.  As we did this, she revised some of her notes so that they flowed better on the page that she had planned for the category. She cut out the typed sentences, arranged them in the order she wanted for each page and glued them into place.

 

Up Close with Her Favorite Animal

During this project, we joined a homeschool group on a field trip to a small local zoo called Roos-N-More. They had a baby sloth that the kids got to pet. Storyteller wrote a story about that experience and added a photo of the sloth to her book. She also drew a picture of it.

 

 

The only handwriting she ended up doing was copying a poem about sloths. I would have liked for her to do more, but this was a good start for her first project of this kind. She wrote the poem on lined paper and then glued it onto cardstock for the book.

Once all the pages were assembled in the order she wanted, she three-holed punched it and tied it up with yarn. It is 13 pages long and most of the pages are double sided.

The entire project of this book included…

• identifying important facts
• putting it into her own words
• arranging facts into categories
• finding pictures for the categories
• arranging the facts in order
• arranging the pages for the book

WOW! Who cares if she didn’t handwrite much of it! Even with all the work she put into it, she needed very little guidance from me. I let her decide what she wanted to put into the book and how she wanted it to flow from start to finish.

 

Bringing it to Life with Videos

During this time, we watched a Wild Kratts episode about the Amazon rain forest and sloths called Rainforest Stew. I also found a PBS documentary about sloths called A Sloth Named Velcro. It was an hour-long show meant for adults. They were able to watch sloths for a whole hour and they absolutely loved it! I had to stop it a few times to explain some of what was happening, but they seemed to follow it very well.

 

Most Awesome Tangent Ever!

Several months before starting this project, we had a science lesson that talked about things people do that can damage the Earth. One of the many rabbit trails we followed was learning about endangered species and organizations that help these animals and their habitats. We ended up at the World Wildlife Fund website to learn more. She saw that they offer species specific symbolic animal adoptions and they just happen to have sloths listed as an option. They offer optional gifts for different levels of donation.

The donation of $55 included a gift of a stuffed animal, adoption certificate, species info card, postcard and gift bag. She worked very hard to save $55 to adopt a sloth. That’s a lot of money for a 7 year old!  I thought she would get distracted and end up deciding to buy something else, but she kept her focus and hit her goal right as she finished her animal book project about sloths.  Perfect timing!

 

 

We talked a lot about what her money will do to help sloths. Many times, it seemed that she thought she was just saving up her money to buy a stuffed animal. However, once she received her stuffed animal sloth, I overheard her telling it that her money was going to help the sloths in the rain forest. She did understand but she also believed that she adopted the stuffed animal. She included her story of adopting the sloth in her animal book and put a copy of the adoption certificate on the cover. This was such a perfect way to end this project!

 

 

This was such a hit that Storyteller had a list of animals ready for more animal mini book projects and little sis can’t wait to do one of her own.