Nature In Your Nurture

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.

🌿🌻Wangari Maathai Planted Trees by Kate Coombs, illustrated by Seth Lucas
This board book tells the simplified story of environmentalist Wangari Maathai, who helped Kenya recover from colonial deforestation by planting new trees, restoring wind shelter & erosion control that repaired much of the landscape.

🌿🌻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.

🌿Over in the Grasslands by Marianne Berkes, illustrated by Jill Dubin
Set to “Over in the Meadow,” this sing-along counting book explores ten animals from the African Savanna—and their babies!

🌿Anne and Her Tower of Giraffes: The Adventurous Life of the First Giraffologist by Karlin Gray, illustrated by Aparna Varma
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. 

🌿Anna & Samia: The True Story of Saving a Black Rhino by Paul Meisel
Rhino conservationist Anna Merz cares for an orphaned rhino named Samia until she’s able to fend & forage for herself.

🌿If You Were an Elephant by Leslie Staub, illustrated by Richard Jones
This cute book invites readers to imagine life as an elephant, casually slipping us fact after fact about elephants and the ways they live.

🌿Serengeti: Plains of Grass by Leslie Bulion, illustrated by Becca Stadtlander
This beautifully-illustrated book walks us through the ecosystem of Africa’s most famous savanna, describing rainfall, grasses, trees, and animals from large to small. Smaller text provides additional information about food webs and migration patterns to readers who are ready to learn more.

🌿Small Mighty Dung Beetle by Mary Auld, illustrated by Hannah Bailey
This book provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of the life cycle of one species of dung beetle on the African savannas. Additional information is presented at the end of the book about species of dung beetles around the world.

🌿Rain by Sanya Stojic
In this boldly-illustrated story, the animals of a hot and dry African savanna communicate the ways that they sense the approach, arrival, and passage of the rain. Plants grow after the rainfall and the soil begins to dry and crack again.

🌿Five Hiding Ostriches by Barbara McGrath, illustrated by Riley Samels
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.

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

“Giraffe Song” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Go Baby Rhino Go” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Elephants Have Wrinkles” – Rainbow Songs (originally April Kassirer, 1988)
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” – The Tokens
“Zousan (Little Elephant)” – Elizabeth Mitchell
“The Zebra Song” – Love to Sing
“Giraffe” – Pinkfong
“The Tall Giraffe” – Johnny Richardson
“One Elephant” – Sharon, Lois, & Bram
“Baby Elephant” – Jay Laga’aia
“E is for Elephant” – Mr. Roberelli
“Look at all the Elephants” – Caspar Babypants
“The Elephant” – Hap Palmer
“Hippo Action” – Kidzone, Dave Wall
“The Hippopotamus” – Kidzone, Dave Wall
“Little Rhinocerous” – Music with Gina
“Sleepy Rhinocerous” – Canticuenos
“Roar! (Lion Song)” – ABC Kids
“Hyena” – Kidloland
“Ostrich” – Kidloland
“Elephant” – Kidloland
“Rhino” – Kidloland
“Zebra” – Kidloland
“Giraffe” – Kidloland
“Jackal” – Kidloland
“Ostrich” – Kidloland

NIYN – African Savanna on Spotify
NIYN – African Savanna on Youtube
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