Book Review: Hiders Seekers Finders Keepers

After I wrote the other day all about hibernating animals, I came across another book that would be fun for a unit study on hibernation or animals in the winter.

Hiders Seekers Finders Keepers: How Animals Adapt in Winter by Jessica Kulekjian and Salini Perera shows different animals getting ready for winter. The hiders are animals like turtles, frogs, bees, chipmunks, bears, snakes and bugs, and the book shows all of them in the places and ways they like to spend wither, with a couple of sentences about each. For example we learn that carpenter ants make a substance called glycerol, which helps prevent them from freezanimals like squirrels that hide a future feast, or foxes who grow a warmer coat for winter.

The book includes lovely illustrations that show a dad anding.

Meanwhile the seekers like geese, elk and mule deer move around to find a better place to spend the winter. Of course butterflies and lots of other birds and insects do this, too. Keepers are daughter walking through the winter forest. In the end they find rabbit tracks, and there’s a guide to different animal tracks in the snow in the back of the book. There are also resources for further reading, documentaries to watch and websites to visit to learn more about the different animals featured in the book and how they get through the winter.

There is a lot of detail in the illustrations that can keep you talking beyond the facts on the page. Kids will have fun noticing animals that are hiding and what’s going on in the background of drawings.

This book is pretty, short but full of facts that will interest the animal lovers in your classroom or home and shows many different ways that animals can prepare for winter.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2022 by Kids Can Press, suggested retail price $19.99

[Photo: Kids Can Press]

Johnny Appleseed Day is sometimes celebrated on Sept. 26 because that is John Chapman’s birthday, but even if you’re just doing an apple unit study for fall it’s a great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed.

And that’s the place to start, that Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman who was born in 1774 in what was then the province of Massachusetts Bay. He traveled west when he turned 18 and despite the image of him randomly tossing apple seeds everywhere, he was really a deliberate planter of apple tree nurseries, which he left in the care of others and checked on every year or two.

Learn a little more of his story with these cute coloring pages (though not entirely historically accurate, they’re still cute) from Homeschool of 1. They also have a Johnny Appleseed themed word search printable.

This pin of a Scholastic News page doesn’t link to a website, but it gives you some basic information and a true and false quiz you can use with kids.

Crystal & Co. has a cute apple themed counting mini book you can print and use with your Johnny Appleseed unit. They also have some coloring pages with a bit of handwriting practice. Or practice cutting with the Johnny Appleseed themed worksheets from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Make a Johnny Appleseed puppet to help tell the story with this craft with a free printable template from Simple Everyday Mom. You’ll also find some cute printable worksheets there to learn his story and put it in the correct order.

Color, cut out and assemble this Johnny Appleseed drawing from Homeschool Preschool. They also have an apple seed counting activity you can use for practicing one to one correspondence.

Tiaras and Tantrums has a free printable apple unit that includes Johnny Appleseed facts and coloring pages, as well as how to say apple in different languages, tracing apple vocabulary, art project ideas, science experiments and more.

And if you need more apple themed activities to go with your Johnny Appleseed celebrations, check out my posts on apple crafts and apple learning activities.

Have you read?

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