Books
🌿🌻Who’s Hiding on the Savanna? by Katharine McEwen
This cute board book gives two dozen lift-the-flap facts about animals from the savannas (grasslands) of Africa. Learn facts about ostriches, meerkats, hippos, rhinos, warthogs, monitor lizards, and many more in this beautifully-illustrated book!
🌿🌻E is for Elephant by DK Publishing (illustrated by Kate Slater)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about elephants, including the large African elephant and somewhat smaller Asian elephant.
🌿🌻G is for Giraffe by DK Publishing (illustrated by Kate Slater)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about giraffes in the African savannas, adapted with long necks, long tongues, and even long eyelashes!
🌿🌻Z is for Zebra by DK Publishing (illustrated by Livi Goldberg)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about zebras in the African savannas, including plains zebras and Grevy’s zebras.
🌿🌻Our World: Kenya by Maimouna Jallow (illustrated by Lulu Kitololo)
This bright illustrated board book explores a day in the life of a child in Kenya where the Serengeti savanna and Masai Mara National Reserve are found. Learn a little bit about Kenyan cuisine, games, traditions, and language. A glossary of Swahili words provides translations and explanations.
🌿🌻Owen and Mzee: Best Friends by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumbu (illustrated by Peter Greste)
🌻Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae
In this book, the animals of the jungle and savanna tease Gerald the Giraffe for his awkward stature, laughing as he tries to dance like the others. Running away, he encounters a kind cricket who plays a melody just for him. Inspired by the music and the beautiful moon, Gerald dances a unique and graceful dance under the moonlight and he and the other animals who witness his dance learn an important lesson about differences.
🌿Anne and Her Tower of Giraffes: The Adventurous Life of the First Giraffologist by Karlin Gray
After meeting a giraffe at the zoo, young Anne Innis Dagg searches for books about giraffes. When she can’t learn about them from books, or school, or even university studies, she travels to South Africa to study a group (“tower”) of giraffes herself. When universities won’t give her an opportunity to teach, she writes books about giraffes instead.
🌿Over in the Grasslands by Marianne Berkes
Set to “Over in the Meadow,” this sing-along counting book explores ten animals from the African Savanna—and their babies!
🌿Five Hiding Ostriches by Barbara McGrath
This counting book features excellent rhythm and rhyme as five ostriches run away and take shelter from a hungry lion, lying down on the ground with their necks flat to the earth. An informational page at the end of the book even explains how this practice sparked the old misconception that ostriches buried their heads in the sand.
Rhino in the House: The True Story of Saving Samia by Daniel Kirk
Pinduli by Janell Cannon
Big Little Hippo by Valeri Gorbachev
Elizabetti’s Doll by Stephanie A. Bodeen
Elizabetti wants a baby to care for, so she finds a nicely-sized rock and swaddles it in a blanket, naming it and lovingly tending it as her mother does for her new baby brother. She has a scare when her doll goes missing and is found supporting a cooking pot over the fire, but her mother helps her collect the beloved stone and Elizabetti hugs and rocks her doll until she falls asleep.
Creative Art Opportunities
🦁Collage with twine clippings
🦁Collage with dry grass clippings
🦁Collage with crinkly paper grass
🦁Sprinkle dry dusty soil over wet paint
🦁Painting with mud
Hands On Experiences
⛅️Explore dry grass or hay in a sensory bin
⛅️Explore dry dusty soil or sand in a sensory bin
⛅️Explore mud in a sensory bin
⛅️Explore with figurines of African savannah animals
⛅️Pour water into dry soil or sand– does it stay and pool?
🌿Read or play under a shady tree on a hot sunny day
🌿Explore mud in the earth
🌿Rub mud onto hands and arms to keep cool in the sun
🌿Wade or crawl through tall summer grasses
Songs to Learn and Sing
“Elephants Have Wrinkles” – April Kassirer, 1988 (excerpt)
Elephants have wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles.
Elephants have wrinkles, wrinkles everywhere.
On their toes, (On their toes)
No one knows, (No one knows)
Why-y-y-y
“Giraffe Song” – Claudia Robin Gunn (excerpt)
Sometimes I wish I could be a giraffe
Head stretched up high in the leaves
I would pretend a giraffe’s what I am
And my friends had long necks like me
Heads high up in the sky
Imagine how much we could see
We’d sleep standing up
Clean our ears with our tongues
Oh what a life that would be
“Mbube” or “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” – Composed by Solomon Linda in 1939, the English version’s lyrics are blended here with the original Zulu chorus (The history of the song is very complicated, but it’s important to me to honor both its origins and its global legacy).
In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight
In the jungle, the mighty jungle
The lion sleeps tonight
Mbube (Lion)
Uyimbube (You’re a Lion)
Uyimbube (You’re a Lion)
Uyimbube (You’re a Lion)
Uyimbube (You’re a Lion)
Uyimbube Mama We (You’re a Lion, Mama)
Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight
Near the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight
NIYN – African Savannah on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.
Poems
Kana ka Nicola – a Kikuku poem and tongue twister from Kenya, wherein Nicole’s child is afraid of a frog (who is also afraid of Nicole’s child)
Kana ka Nicola
Kona kora kora
Nako kora kona
Kana ka Nicola kora
Nature In Your Nurture 