Zebra Unit

What is black and white and red all over? Now if this is said out loud the answer can either be a newspaper, you know back in the days when people would read newspapers, or a sunburned zebra. As I’m slowly pegging my way through a My Father’s World Booklist, and creating these booklists, here’s my Zebra booklist, that a few days ago I decided I’m going to send monthly craft and tea kits to my niece and nephew, and I’m using these Book lists as inspiration. I’m going to film myself reading the spine book and send some craft ideas up to Iowa, and voila. Some fun memories for them. My niece is heading into Kindergarten and my nephew is in Preschool, so this could be fun.

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Zebra Unit spine book

The Official My Father’s World spine book is Amazing Animal Alphabet, probably because there are not many zebra books. I’m vaguely indifferent to this book, it’s a decent alphabet book, but it’s literally the animal and the picture. It’s got some fun illustrations, and you can do some great stuff with the illustrations, so I’d totally use it with kindergarten.

But, I am going to use This is a Serious Book as a spine. After my kids outgrew picture books there was a fun trend of “interactive” picture books where you would shake, turn, or flip the book as part of the story.

Since Z is usually the last letter taught both because it’s at the end of the alphabet AND because it’s not used in as many beginning phonics words, so it is taught later because of that, having a silly book like this would be a fun way to celebrate.

Fiction Zebra booklist

There are not a lot of zebra picture books. I was kind of surprised by that, I thought there were more.

• All My Stripes– I almost picked this as my spine, but it is very specifically about Autism, and it would not work as well to focus on for an entire week-long lesson about zebras. I definitely want to focus on it as part of the unit because it is a great book and does a great job bringing up benefits of being different and celebrating being who you are.
• Circle, Square, Moose– Moose somehow ends up in a shape book and is confused, but his friend Zebra comes along to help him get through it.
• The Black and White Factory– Zebra, Panda, and Penguin work at the black and white factory, but somehow color gets into the factory causing problems. Can we help them fix it?
• First comes the zebra– a story of the African safari and how the animals come together and how two boys become friends
• Pinduli– zebras are only tangentially involved in this story of a young hyena who is teased by the different animals of the safari (including a zebra) and how she fixes the problem

Nonfiction Zebra booklist

Okay, there are a lot of nonfiction books about zebras called Zebra. Yep, just Zebra. I know you’re shocked.

• I am a Zebra– this may be out of print, but it is a nice simple text that early readers can read on their own following the life of a zebra foal.
• Zebras– another book written for an early reader.
• Zebras– this book is for slightly stronger readers and has slightly more information about zebras
• Zebras– man our library has a lot of books for early readers, and it did have books for older. readers, I just happened to have several books for early readers by accident. I just think it’s kind of funny I happened to grab four books geared for first-graders or early second-grade.
• Zebras and oxpeckers work together– this is a really cool book showing how two animals have a symbiotic relationship and how God designed our world to work together so well. It always amazes me to read about things like this.

Okay, at this point this is a pretty amazing zebra booklist, and I’m going to come back later and turn this into a cool zebra unit. I’m currently brainstorming how to start off at the beginning of the alphabet for an A is for Apple Unit.