Upside Down Babies

A brilliantly funny animal mother and baby book with a clever twist!

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

Find all of the rhyming words in the book.
Start your own story with the first line, ‘Once when the world tipped upside down…’. What might happen next?
Imagine that you were one of the animals that were mixed up. Write a diary entry about your experiences.
Write a set of instructions to teach one of the parents how to look after their new baby.
Can you find any examples of onomatopoeia in the story?
Write a sequel to the story that explains what happens to the gorilla and the baby after they swapped mums.
Write a story about some children whose school turned upside-down, and they had to go to different classrooms and go home with different families.

Can you find out how fast (or how big) each animal is in the story? Make a graph / chart to show the different results?

Make a list of similarities and differences between the baby animals and their new parents when they get mixed up (e.g. parrots and pigs, tortoise and otter).
Find out about the different habitats where each animal lives. How are they all adapted to live in those places?
What are different types of animals’ homes called? Can you find any names of their homes in the story?
Lion Cub shouts that he is a ‘carnivore’. What does this mean? Can you sort different groups of animals into carnivores, omnivores and herbivores.

Imagine that two different animals had a baby of their own. Use art software to create a picture of what their baby might look like.

Choose one of the animals in the story, find some photos of it and use these as the starting point for your own illustrations.