One Night In The Zoo

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“One moonlit, magical night in the zoo
An elephant jumped in the air and flew.
But nobody knew.”

It’s only once all the visitors have gone home that the real fun starts in the Zoo! Learn to count in a fun and wonderfully imaginative way as you follow all the animals through the night in this gorgeous picture book, and find out what mischief they get into.

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

English

• Can you create your own counting story based on a similar title (e.g. ‘One Night in the Circus’ or ‘One Night in the Library’)?
• Can you find any examples of onomatopoeia in the story? Can you think of any more?
• Make a list of ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments and use them to discuss whether animals should be kept in zoos.
• Write a recipe for the ‘squid and squidgyberry stew’ that the bears cook.
• Imagine that you visited this zoo on this ‘magical, moonlit night’ and you saw everything that happened. Retell the story from your own point of view.
• Write a newspaper report about a sighting of a flying elephant!
• Look for examples of rhyming throughout the story.

Maths

• Use the information in the story to make up your own word problems, e.g. How many animals were in the story altogether? How many birds / monkeys? How many tails?
• Create your own counting chart (like the one in the back of the book) showing the correct numbers of animals in the story.

Science

• Zoos often have signs that give information about the animals in each enclosure. Can you create some of these to teach others about your favourite animals?

Computing

• Make a persuasive poster to encourage people to visit this magical zoo.
• Make an audio or a video advert to promote the zoo.

Design Technology

• Could you create your own model of a zoo with enclosures for the different animals?
• Can you design a suitable enclosure for each animal?

Art

• Look at photographs of real animals and use them as the starting point for your own drawings.
• Draw a picture of the rabbits’ view from the top of the giraffe’s head.
• Imagine that the keeper looked out of his window in the middle of the night. Draw the picture that he saw.

Geography

• Draw a map of the zoo featured in the story. Show the locations of the different animals.
• Find out the location of your nearest zoo and plan a trip there. How will you get there? How long will the journey be?