who’s the longest? - pbworksstimson.pbworks.com/f/slowly+sloth.pdf · for fun activities and...

Illustrations © Eric Carle

For fun activities and more, visit www.booktime.org.uk You may photocopy this sheet

Who’s thelongest?

Colour and cut out the strips. Match them to the animals which are the same length.



What did thesloth do first?

Look at the pictures and talk about what’s happening. What did the sloth do first? Next? After that? Look at your book to find the answer.

Cut out the pictures and put them in the right order.

Slowly, slowly, slowly,the sloth ate a leaf.

Slowly, slowly,

slowly,the sloth fell asleep.

Slowly, slowly, slowly,the sloth crawledalong a branch of a tree.



CountingAnimals

How many animals do you see on this page? How many of each animal are there? Practise tracing the numbers.

Now look for these animals in your book.

sloth macaws puma

armadillo tree frogs toucans

9 animals



Match the birdsCan you draw lines from the birds to their outlines?



Make puppetsPhotocopy this page onto card. Carefully cut out the animals.

Colour them in, then stick them onto lollipop sticks to make puppets.

Now you can tell the story your own way!



Make a snakeHave fun colouring the snake, then, very carefully cut it out.



[Slowly Slowly Slowly Session 1]

Hide and seek

For this session, the children will all need to be able to see a copy of the book. Once you have read the book to the children, look

again at the final spread showing all of the animals.

• Point to one of the creatures so that all of the children can see where you’re pointing.

• Ask them to point to the same creature in their books.

• Think of words to describe the creature: focus on size, colour, texture, shape, size, pattern, features like wings, beaks,

noses, feet.

• Once the children have described and thought about the creature, ask them to look through the book and find it.

• Once children have found the creature, talk about where it is and what it’s doing.

o Is it in the tree, on the tree, under the tree, near the tree, beside the tree?

o Is it sitting, walking, flying?

o It is by itself or does it have a friend?

o Is it day or night? Sunny or raining?

• Children can then look at the sloth. Does he always do the same thing? Is he always in the same position? Can they

describe where he is?

ColouringHere’s the sloth, hanging upside down quite happily. Look at the book.

What is a good colour for his face? And what colour will you choose for his fur?



What’s missing?These two pictures are not quite the same. What is missing from the

second one? Can you spot four things?



Who lives inthe tree?

Can you draw a line from the tree to every animal who lives there?



Hide and seekFor this session, the children will all need to be able to see a copy of the book. Once you have read the book to the children, look again at the final spread showing all of the animals.

• Point to one of the creatures so that all of the children can see where you’re pointing.

• Ask them to point to the same creature in their books.

• Think of words to describe the creature: focus on size, colour, texture, shape, size, pattern, features like wings, beaks, noses, feet.

• Once the children have described and thought about the creature, ask them to look through the book and find it.

• Once children have found the creature, talk about where it is and what it’s doing.

o Is it in the tree, on the tree, under the tree, near the tree, beside the tree?

o Is it sitting, walking, flying?

o Is it by itself or does it have a friend?

o Is it day or night? Sunny or raining?

• Children can then look at the sloth. Does he always do the same thing? Is he always in the same position? Can they describe where he is?



Fast and slow Use a PE session, inside or out, to explore moving at different speeds.

• Ask the children to walk around and stop when you hit a tambourine.

• Now ask them to run until you bang the tambourine.

• Ask: Was it easier to stop quickly when you are walking or running? Why?

• Ask the children to tiptoe, creeping very slowly until you tap on your tambourine. Model moving in a slow, exaggerated way, so children can look and copy.

• Ask: Do you like moving quickly or slowly? Why

• Ask children to listen while you shake the tambourine. Does that sound like a fast sound or a slow one?

• Can they suggest how you could indicate slow movement on your tambourine?

• Tell the children to listen carefully to your tambourine and to do what it says. If you shake it, they have to move quickly, if you tap it (or whatever the agreed sound was) they have to move slowly.

• Let them practice responding to the tambourine.

• Ask: Is it more interesting when you move fast or slowly? Why?

• Explore questions like:

oDo people ever move really, really slowly in school or at home?

o Is it easier to have a conversation with someone when you’re walking normally beside them, or running fast beside them?

o Is it better to move quickly or slowly when you’re running a race?

oHow is it best to move when you’re crossing a road with a grown up?

oHow do you move around at school? Why?

After you have asked each question, give children the opportunity to try out moving fast and slowly, role-playing each situation.



Carnival of theanimals

The Carnival of the Animals (by Saint Seans) is a set of 14 very short pieces of music, each intended to paint a musical picture of the animal. Most of the movements last between 50 seconds and about 3 minutes.

If you don’t have access to the music, listen to it through an internet site like Spotify which allows you to listen to music legally without downloading it.

Find pictures of: a lion, a chicken, a running horse, a tortoise, an elephant, a fish, a kangaroo. These are the movements the children are most likely to enjoy.

• Before listening to any of the music, explore what the children already know about the animals. What colour are they? How big are they? How do they move? Which sound do they make? If possible, allow a short drama session to let the children move like the animals.

• As the children listen to a movement, give them a choice of three of the animals to look at. Ask them which animals they think the music is about. Can they explain why?

• Discuss the speed of the music. Why is it sometimes slow and heavy and other times quick and light? Make links between the music and the way the animals behave and move.

After listening to some of the movements, show the children the pictures of the animals at the end of Slowly Slowly Slowly said the Sloth.

• Talk about how children know or imagine these animals to move. Which of the movements in Carnival of the Animals would be best for these creatures? If you have time, listen to some of the movements again while looking at these pictures.



Words,words, words

Re-read the book. Listen again to the page where the sloth speaks. Apart from giving the children the opportunity to enjoy the sounds in the words, talk about their meaning.

• Explore the sloth’s choice of words and talk about what these words mean.

• Do the children have any favourite amongst these words?

• Ask the children to think of the word ‘fast’. Do they know any other words which mean the same thing?

• Prompt them by thinking about things that go fast (eg, racing cars, space rockets, trains, football players, jaguars and cheetahs). If possible, use video clips or photographs to stimulate the children’s understanding.

• Can children tell you any other words that mean the same as ‘fast’?

• Repeat the process for things that move slowly (eg, snails, sloths, elderly people, babies, tortoises).



Aroundthe World

Learning about sloths in order to create a collage.

Introduce the letter from Dame Jane Goodall at the start of the book and read it to the children.

• Show the children a map of the world.• Identify where you are on the map.• Find South America and identify this as the place Jane Goodall writes about,

where sloths come from.• If you have access to the internet, look at videos of three-toed sloths on

http://video.nationalgeographic.com or www.youtube.com. Also look at images of sloths and their babies.

Gather a collection of fabrics, including some brown velvety fabric or cord, if possible. Let children feel the fabrics and talk about how they look and feel. Which one would be best for making a picture of a sloth?

• Refer the children back to the images, videos and pictures in the book.• What leads the children to making that choice of fabric?• Which fabric would be best for making the sloth’s face?• And how will you make his toes?

Cut out simple sloth outlines from your chosen fabrics and combine them to make tactile sloths.

Revisit your videos, images and the book to look at the background vegetation. Talk to the children about:

• how high up the trees are• the weather• the vegetation.

Establish similarities and differences between familiar vegetation and those surrounding the sloth.

• Let the children explore more fabrics and other media in order to select appropriate colours and textures to make the vegetation around the cloth- including the tree trunks.

• Make a collage of sloths in an appropriate surrounding.



We are alldifferent

For this session, everyone needs to be able to see a copy of the book. Read the book, and ask the children to think about what each animal likes to do.

• What does the sloth like to do? What does he eat? How does he move?• Ask the children to think about the questions the other animals asked. Why

is he so slow? • Reread the sloth’s reply to the leopard. What do they think the sloth is

trying to say? Read Eric Carle’s message on the back cover of the book. What could we learn from the sloth?

• Look at other animals in the pictures. What do they like to do? (Monkeys are jumping, bats and butterflies are flying, the snake is slithering, the puma is

prowling and the frogs are hopping.) • Talk about the idea that each of the animals likes to do different things.

So which animal likes hopping in the rain? Flying at night? Jumping in the daytime?

• Ask children to think about which animals in the book they’d like to be. Would they like to swing through the trees? Or run fast like the leopard? Or fly up in the sky?

• Make a pictogram chart showing what each of the children would like to do best. Isn’t it interesting that we prefer to do different things? That’s because we are all different. Talk about how boring it would be if we all liked the same thing.

• Talk about how we can learn things from people who are different or who like different things. They have a different way of looking at the world and are good at things we might find difficult.

• Show the children how people who like different things can work together to achieve things. Ask them: if we are going through the jungle together, which animal will fetch the food from high up in the trees? Who can help us get to where we want to go fastest? Who will be a good lookout and spot things we haven’t seen? We couldn’t do all of those things if we weren’t working together, could we?

who’s the longest? - pbworksstimson.pbworks.com/f/slowly+sloth.pdf · for fun activities and...

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