Dear Parents and Guardians:

Every Ranger Rick Jr. magazine features animals that children will recognize and animals that they have not seen before. This month the magazine shares facts about animals that people have as pets. Then it shows a variety of wild animals in the story about animal ears.

Does your family have a favorite pet? If not, perhaps your neighbor has a dog or cat. As you read pages 4–5, tell your child how long a goldfish can live. (I think 40 years is amazing.) Did you know dogs have sweat glands on the bottom of their paws?

Scan the QR Code on page 4 to see a guinea pig “popcorning.” After watching the video, ask your child what he does when he is happy.

Turn to pages 6–11 to learn some amazing facts about animal ears. As you name an animal on the first spread, have your child point to that animal’s ears. How are the ears different? How are they the same? Are the ears large or small? Pointed or round?

On pages 8–9, you’ll discover that bats and foxes both use their ears to find something to eat. Dik-diks and rabbits use their ears to listen for danger.

Turn the page and talk about how elephants move their ears to create a cooling breeze. Then scan the QR code that’s on the photo of the elephant to watch the animal flap its ears.

Detecting sound is important to animals. But not all animal ears look like ears. Show your child page 11 and point to where the iguana and katydid ears are located.

Your entire family can learn a lot about animals by reading Ranger Rick Jr. each month. I hope you enjoy it.

As you learn about grizzly bears on pages 26-27, read more about them in “Grizzly Tale.”

 

 

Mike Wilson, Founder
Prekindergarten Reading Encouragement Project
PREP – Helping childhood literacy one family at a time.
facebook.com/PREPDelaware