Armadillo science lesson

 

Earlier this week, Jeff told me he saw an armadillo as he was leaving for work, wandering around our yard.  I was pretty excited, because armadillos are common to our area, but you rarely see them alive. So, I kept an eye out for a fun Nature Study in our front yard to turn into a science lesson. Ordinarily this would just be a land animals lesson (which I apparently still don’t have a land animals landing page, how is that true says Future Ticia 2025).

By the by, Future Ticia 2025 is updating this post for those of you who don’t randomly have an armadillo destroying your front lawn for a science lesson.

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 Our armadillo nature study

Armadillos have poor eyesight, and their instinct when scared is to freeze and then jump up into the air very high to scare the predator.  That does not go well when the predator is a car, and they usually don’t survive………

So, you can imagine I was pretty excited when I saw one outside the next morning.  I got all the kids outside and we watch him run around and reviewed what we knew of armadillos.

 Armadillos are nocturnal, which means they usually come out at night.  They can’t see very well, but can smell very well.  The bad eyesight was reinforced when we heard him bump into several things in the bushes. 

Armadillos like to dig A LOT.  We looked at the holes in the ground he had dug last night, which you can see behind him.  I asked the kids why they dig, what they were trying to get, and they answered “bugs,” and they were right.  Armadillos eat primarily grubs and insects in the ground.

Future Ticia 2025 will add, we had an armadillo come and take over our yard last year and you can just see the giant tunnels and how it makes a yard look afterward. Back to past Ticia 2011

 

When I asked how they dig, they said they have claws on their front feet like Mac (our dog) does.  He can dig tunnels like Mac tries to.

Quick video of the armadillo I caught:

 

One thing that surprised me was how noisy he was on the sidewalk.  His claws are so long in front that they clicked rather loudly in the morning air.

And of course Batman had to pretend to be an armadillo and move just like the armadillo did…….  It was great.

Armadillo lesson if you don’t have one in your front yard

I know we were lucky to randomly have an armadillo show up in our front yard. Even with them being rather common here, you don’t get to see them all the time, so it was a privilege to see it.

So, let’s get you some books to read and a great video that gives you some more fun facts and a better balance.

I’m going to combine this with both some great nonfiction and fiction choices.

• Armadillo Tattletale– a modern Just So story that explains why armadillos have such small ears.
• Armadillo Rodeo– I love Jan Brett and I think many Texans pick this book up just because it’s by Jan Brett AND it has armadillos.
• Armadillo from Amarillo– a fun book that would be good to work into a Texas geography unit as the armadillo wanders around Texas.
• Backyard Wildlife Armadillos– I like this series for the amount of information it has, and the great pictures it has.
• Amazing Armadillos– The Step Into Reading series always has great leveled books.

The tricky part about writing booklist like this is my library has some great books, but they look to be possibly out of print, so I don’t want to include them on the list.

We also have a great deal more books on armadillos than most states will because armadillos are a state animal of Texas. I think it’s the small mammal of Texas. The large mammal is the Texas longhorn. But I just wanted to give you a few, not all of the really fun armadillo fiction books we had, so I only included three.

Now, let me give you a few fun armadillo videos.

I’m going to start out with the San Diego Zoo’s video on armadillos. This is a 3-banded armadillo, which is not what Texas has; we have a 9-banded armadillo.

I’m fascinated to see that most of these videos are all about the 3-banded armadillo.

I finally gave in and searched for our 9-banded armadillo and got this super serious man narrating a very short video.

And that’s what I’m finding for the armadillo videos.

More great science lessons for young kids

• Zoo animals preschool unit
• Insect KWL Chart
• How does a cow’s stomach work?
• Elephant booklist
• Penguin Unit (though I think it’s currently only a booklist)

• Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons