We have been learning lots about animals in our homeschool adventures – I try to have my boys read a few nonfiction books every day and lots of times they choose to read about animals. These two books have been great resources for our at-home learning.
Frozen Wild is a wonderful book about cold climate animals and how they survive there.
Many pages open out and sometimes both pages for a four page spread of beautiful illustrations and interesting information.
My boys are always interested in penguins so this is one of their favorite pages. I really like the combination of black and white pencil drawings with the color illustrations.
Both pages open up and talk all about different kinds of penguins and how they are adapted to cold weather living.
Another spread about otters and beavers shows what a beaver’s lodge looks like on the inside and how they build their homes. The information is so easy to read and so interesting!
Frozen Wild has become a new family favorite – all my boys love to sit and peruse the pages, look at the beautiful drawings, and soak up all that information!
And after we learn, we like to DO! We are doing lots of drawing and sketching and painting this year and this Drawing Animal Shape by Shape book has been so much fun!
Each page uses simple shapes to instruct how to draw dozens of different animals. These are simple enough instructions that even my 4 year old enjoys drawing them.
I love the concept of using shapes as the basis for the drawing – anyone can do that and I think it’s really helping my kids translate what they’re learning into their own creative drawings. Drawing is all about using shapes and we are seeing that very clearly with this book.
These are some sample drawings from last week. They are so simple but end up looking so great. This drawing book has really boosted my kids’ drawing confidence. They are having success and loving drawing!
