Meerkat Mail

Product Information

I loved everything about this book. Gravett had a great concept and it was executed wonderfully. The postcards hold the interest of younger and older children/readers and the detailed illustrations are both accurate to the biome, intriguing, and add an element of humor to the story. Education Shed Ltd, Severn House, Severn Bridge, Riverside North, Bewdley, Worcestershire, UK, DY12 1AB

Using the book as part of a project on ‘amazing animals’, precede the actual reading of it with a week of experiences and research focusing on animals, including some or all of the following. Introduce Sunny – either through an image or a meerkat stuffed toy, it will be a good investment! Read the whole text using a visualiser to amplify the images on your IWB. The illustrations convey as much as the text, and children can be helped to understand events, feelings, character details and motivations by close reading of both. Whole Class Reading resources and planning for Year 2 in a zip file based on Emily Gravett’s ‘Meerkat Mail’ book based on early inference skills.

I loved this book it was entertaining, heart-warming and engaging. Sunny the meerkat is not happy in his meerkat home so goes to visit his cousins and uncles, who live in various places,in search of the perfect home. Sunny sends his family lots of postcards from all the different places he visits but none of them seem to suit him. Will Sunny ever find his perfect home?

Watch DVD clips of the chosen animals; read texts; play games such as ‘True or False’; and create information sorting, sharing and matching activities. Talk for Writing across the Curriculum, Pie Corbett and Julia Strong (OUP, 2011) *includes Professor Know it All game The title of the book uses alliteration. Can you make up other potential book titles that also use alliteration? Travel from the desert to the jungle, the beach to the snowy mountains with our list of books that will take you on journeys to many different lands. Absolutely loved this book! Meerkat Mail is a wonderful picture book highlighting, for me, the importance of home and family and how nothing will ever come close no matter how hard you try (bless Sunny!) The thought put into this book is amazing and is definitely worth sharing with children.

Read examples of nonchronological reports about animals and start to develop a bank of common features. Use role-play and games such as ‘Professor Know it All’* to develop the language and sentence constructions of reports. Take photos of Sunny at the local park, eating something, in different weather, etc. Share these images with the children, explaining they where taken on Sunny’s latest adventure. Model writing a postcard from Sunny to his family, using the information headings to structure the content. The children can then conduct a guided tour of the school with Sunny, taking photos of him in different places, answering any questions he may have and ‘helping’ him join in activities. The children can then write their own postcard from Sunny about his trip to their school. 4 Did you know? Launch your topic with a visit from a wild animal sanctuary (meerkats included, if possible). Discuss and record what the children know about these particular animals and support them in preparing their questions for the visit. Immerse the children in visual images and film clips if there is no animal sanctuary near to you and then role-play a wild animal expert for the children to ‘hot-seat’. This is an entertaining and humourous account of Sunny the Meerkat's journey to visit his relatives. Similar in content (if not in style) to the story Marsupial Sue Book and CD, the story explores the differences between the related animals. We liked learning about the various animals and their habitats and we loved reading the postcards. Overall, we really enjoyed reading this book together.

This is a sorry about a meerkat who gets fed up with the hot weather and crowded environment with all the other meerkats so decided to travel around Africa to find somewhere better to live. With a huge range of resources, you can bring Meerkat Mail into different subjects and use this great story to engage your students' learning. What do these Meerkat Mail resources teach? Meerkat Mail is a lovely children's short story by Emily Gravett that follows Sunny the Meerkat as he goes off on his travels. Meerkat Mail is a favourite amongst lots of young children and using these resources can extend your children's learning. Spring 2/ Summer 1 - Growing/Minibeasts - Aaaarrgghh, Spider! Once There were Giants - Celebrations The most significant activity that this book inspires is English - writing postcards. In Year 1 classes, I've seen children write postcards *in the style of* Sunny, or writing *as if they were* Sunny, going on new adventures. One teacher took a toy Meerkat to her local park and took pictures of him doing various activities (e.g. climbing the monkey bars), then the children selected one or two of the pictures and wrote a postcard based on that. The older children could write more sophisticated postcards, while younger children could focus on following a pre-set template.

4 Did you know?

In the words of a certain car insurance obsessed meerkat, a book project using Meerkat Mailby Emily Gravett is ‘simples!’, especially if you use the Talk for Writing process. As a core story for a half term it is perfect for KS1 – with plenty of text types to focus on, captivating illustrations, quirky characters and lots of humour. It’s also a fabulous way to develop geography, PSHE, art and history through a theme such as ‘amazing animals’. 1 There’s no place like home? What does this book teach you about meerkats? Use this information (along with your own research) to create a report about them.