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![]() Tap-tap, tap-tap! pecks a Gila woodpecker. Morning is here! Are you ready to race through the day alongside roadrunners and jackrabbits? Hunt through the night alongside coyotes and snakes? Come spend a day and night in the Sonoran Desert. The clock is ticking … Time to look, listen, and learn! Every day and every night animals are busy in the Sonoran desert. They find food, water and safe places to rest. They have everything they need. A DAY AND NIGHT IN THE DESERT 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 deserts of the world, fun facts, a glossary and index, and a guide to websites appropriate for the age group. |
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Common Core Connections
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Next Generation Science Standards
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Children's Projects
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 desert animals. Draw with chalk on black paper to draw pictures of desert animals at night.
Desert Coloring Pages
Who is awake at 6:00 in the morning? Click here for a printable picture. A Gila Monster stores fat in its tail. Click here for a printable picture. ![]() For a desert mammal activity and other suggestions for activities go to this post at the Growing With Science Blog. |
Other Books by Caroline Arnold in the Caroline Arnold's Habitats series
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Reviews
The Horn Book Guide, January 1, 2015
Double-page spreads feature vibrantly colored collage animals (not to scale) against appropriately colored backgrounds (browns for Desert; greens for Rain Forest). The engaging text describes animal behavior and survival mechanisms. A description of each habitat, a world map, "Fun Facts," and two Common Core-aligned critical-thinking exercises are appended. Reading list. Glos., ind. Review covers these Caroline Arnold's Habitats titles: A Day and Night in the Desert and A Day and Night in the Rain Forest. School Library Connection (formerly Library Media Connection), January 16, 2016
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 Growing With Science Blog, February 13, 2015
A Day and Night in the Desert (Caroline Arnold's Habitats) by Caroline Arnold reveals which desert creatures are active during which parts of the day and night. Although it centers on animals and plants found in the Sonoran desert, the book also contains a map showing where deserts are located throughout the world.Reviewer: Roberta Gibson Children's Literature
In the hot desert a woodpecker perches on a prickly saguaro cactus and makes a large hole. A long, gray jackrabbit scampers across the desert sands to escape a lurking coyote in the early morning. Activities build quickly in this book formatted to cycle through 24 hours of a desert day. Along the way several animals and creatures are featured. In addition to the woodpecker and jackrabbit those include a lizard, Gila monster, big horn sheep, roadrunner, hawk, ground squirrel, peccaries, pack rats, snakes, spiders, bats and owls, antelope, fox, kangaroo rat, and tortoise. The desert activity is geared to show readers what takes place in the desert, what lives there, and how the desert looks. Pages at the end tell what a desert is and show where deserts are on a world map. Fun facts offer more information about the desert. The facts are in a section at the book's end and also turn up on various pages as fact bars. A section on critical thinking skills is based on the Common Core Curriculum. A glossary, resources, index and internet sites for kids are included. This book is sure to stir up interest about the desert. Its shorts blurbs of text paired with its paper cut illustrations make the book easy to read. Reviewer: Nancy Garhan Attebury; Ages 5 to 8. |