What the heck is a naked mole rat?

Yes, there is such a thing as a naked mole rat. I thought it was just a made up character by Mo Willems, but we checked into it and they really do exist. We learned about zoo animals this week. Each day I taught them about a different animal. We watched the animal on a web cam, read books about the animal, and created a craft to represent the animal. I was totally surprised to find that there is a naked mole rat web cam that is sponsored by the National Zoo. So, we watched the web cam (they are nasty little things with the face only a mother could love), we read Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems, and then we dressed our naked mole rats. The students liked this animal the best of all. Do you see a pattern here? Underwear...NAKED mole rats....hmmm!?!? After they dressed their mole rat, they filled in the frame "My naked mole rat is a ___.".  These turned out so cute! Here are some pictures...and they are actually upright!


My naked mole rat is a girl.
My naked mole rat is a clown.




My naked mole rat is a princess.
My naked mole rat is a cowboy.














The other animals that I did were giraffes, pandas, tigers and lions.
We read Giraffes Can't Dance and created a paper bag puppet giraffe.
For pandas I did a directional art activity and read Panda Kindergarten.
We made a paper plate lion and I read The Lion and the Mouse.
I read Leo the Late Bloomer and we painted a tiger.
Sorry, I didn't take pictures of these...