Zoo.

Today, as part of our animal unit, I read two of my all time favorite books. I'm a sucker for non-fiction and I think my sprouts share my enthusiasm. Learning about the world around us is just plain fun and these two books bring a bit of the world into our classroom, not something to so easy to do. As a child, I have such vivid memories of going to the zoo. We always lived near one and trips to visit the animals were an often occurrence for my family. I live and work in an area not close to a zoo... both of these books help me bring a little of that excitement to my itty bitty friends.

The first book, Actual Size by Steve Jenkins is a beautifully illustrated oversized book showing different parts of animals in, you guessed it, their actual size. As we read the book, I invited children to come up and compare their eye to that of the giant squid and their foot to that of an elephant. It's pretty powerful.

The second book, Life-Sized Zoo is the same kind of idea, only with photographs. Many of the pages fold out two or three times to show the actual head and neck of the animal in real size. The amount of cheering and elation from both books made my day.

We truly love non-fiction and these books are an amazing asset to our classroom library. Can't visit an actual zoo? Take these over-sized books for a spin and bring the animals to you!