Tracks, Scat, & Animal Facts: Books & Songs
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Explore More: Scat, Tracks, & Animal Facts Learning Magazine
Download this Learning Magazine to help children join the CSI and become Critter Scene Investigators.
The magazine is something children can do on their own, in a small group, or with an adult (parent, teacher, etc.). We do not specify an age recommendation for the learning magazines because the prompts will be open ended enough for children to explore at their own developmental level.
The Learning Magazines are almost entirely black and white for easy printing & can be assembled with one simple staple!
“Perfect for: homeschooling, teachers wanting to incorporate more nature into their curriculum, guided self-learning, learning extensions, and curious nature-minded children.”
So what is in this Learning Magazine?
Spaces for brainstorming and reflecting
Academic/creative outdoor learning activity pages (these pages are aids to get children to be hands-on and engaged in nature by guiding them to make observations, record measurements, write thoughts/creative expressions, make plans, and do experiments)
A new curiosity to help spark children’s wonderment and encourage them to be curious about their world
A fun page filled with nature-based games, puzzles, or riddles
A creative outlet page for children to express themselves in a thoughtful way about the topic
This learning magazine will be available in our SHOP by the time we conclude our Scat, Tracks, & Animal Facts Study
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A wonderful overview to help teach children about tracks, scats, AND signs of common woodland creatures.
After reading, bring this book with you on an outdoor hike and see what you can find!
A hilarious tale of a mole on a quest to find who pooped on his head. The story will surely make you laugh, but also teach you about different animals’ scat. Great for teaching about onomatopoeias or scat. A wonderful picture book for anyone with a sense of humor!
After reading the book, ask children to retell the story in their own words. This is a great book for sequencing. If you’re feeling silly, you can try to act out the book too.
An engaging book all about animal tracks. This book poses thought-provoking questions and hands-on experiments for children to deepen their understandings of tracks.
After reading, actually DO some of the experiments recommended in the book!
A perfect book to get young children interested in animal tracks through an interactive guessing game. Each page allows children to guess who could have made that particular track. This is a great book to help children practice accessing prior knowledge and making inferences. These are important skills that help strengthen reading comprehension.
After reading, have children create their own page for the book to have their friends or family guess what animal track they drew!
Interactive nonfiction book filled with scat stats! Interesting tidbits smattered throughout- like do you know which animal’s poop is orange? or which dung can be burned for fuel?
After reading this book, share some of the knowledge you’ve gained in a creative way with your family, friends, or another class!
This book allows the reader to follow tracks through snow, mud, and sand. Each mystery footprint has a four stance poem that helps the reader uncover the animal who left the track. After the animals are revealed, it is followed up with interesting information about each animal.
After reading this book, try making tracks in different mediums (mud, sand, snow, water, dirt, etc.)
A handy “How to Read Animal Tracks and Signs” guide for those looking for a simple book to take out exploring. For all ages, but not geared towards children as others in this list are.
Fantastic and engaging book for children to learn about tracks because all of the tracks are actual size. Children can have fun comparing and contrasting different tracks or ordering them based on size. It is especially fun to see how our human tracks compare to each animals’ track!
After reading, have the children order the tracks according to size and put their own tracks into the ordering too!
Similarly to the Life-Sized Animal Tracks book, this book allows children to see the realistic size of animal scat. This helps children understand the size of animals and how digestion differs between species.
After reading this book, you could create your own ‘Life-Sized’ book choosing your favorite animal!
Songs:
Scat Rap
(1988, Andy Bennett, Mary Keebler, Rodd Pemble, Doug Elliott, Billy Jonas)
Chorus:
It starts with an “s” and it ends with a “t”
It comes out of you and comes out of me
I know what you’re thinking, you can call it that
But let’s be scientific and call it scat.
Verses:
You’re walking through the woods and your nose goes “ooooo”
Must be some critter’s scat’s near you
It may seem gross but it’s okay
They ain’t got no place to flush it away.
Down the trail something’s lying on the ground
Nature’s tootsie roll all long and brown
Don’t wrinkle your nose, don’t lose your lunch
Break it apart, you might learn a bunch
Don’t use your fingers, use a stick
Keep it sanitary now that’s the trick
If you wanna find out what animals eat
Take a good look at what they excrete
Stuck in the scat are all kinds of clues
Parts of the food their bodies can’t use
Like bones and fur (2x)
Hard berries and seeds (2x)
Crawfish shells, ouch! (2x)
Grass fibers and weeds (2x)
Possum up in a ‘simmon tree
Eating all the ‘simmons he could see
Backed his butt into the weeds
His scat was nothing but ‘simmon seeds
Down by the creek on a hollow log
Scat full of berries and bones of a frog
Late last night he was out with the moon
Wading in the creek it was Mr. Raccoon
You’re driving your car by a woods or a field
Scat goes splat on your windshield
It’s full of seeds, all purple and white
You just got bombed by a bird in flight
Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat on the trail two minutes old
Two minutes old, is this a joke?
No, it’s still warm, look at it smoke
Cat scat, rat scat, bat scat, too
All god’s chillum do scat a lot, too
Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat in the woodlot nine days old
Nine days old, how can you tell?
Getting kinda dry and not much smell
Dog doo, frog doo, hog doo, too
All god’s chillum do a doodley do
Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat in a cave 1000 years old
1000 years old, could that be right?
Sure that’s no jive: petrified copralite
Mole scat, vole scat, bear scat more
There’s so darn many kinds of spoor
Sneaking through the woods be quiet now, shish!
Take a quiet step – something goes squish
Don’t put it in your mouth, it ain’t delish
Let’s put some in a Petri dish
Look through a microscope, what do you see?
Microscopic organisms 1, 2, 3
Bacillus, streptococcus, and E. coli
They eat scat and then they die
Don’t you worry, no need to cry
They ain’t that different from you and I
If you want to know who was out and around
Take a long hard look at the scat on the ground
It tells us what they eat, tells us who they are
That’s what we know about scat so far
