Unit Six A fall unit study Ages 4–7
Squirrels
$5.99 · One-time purchase
Watch a squirrel work, hide ten counters the way it scatters food, build a model leaf nest, and discover how one forgotten acorn may become an oak.
Page two
The four books
Read aloud, more than once, in no particular order. Each one is annotated — why it is here and what to watch for. If one of the four is out at the library, four is not the point.
- The Busy Little Squirrel — Nancy Tafuri
- Scaredy Squirrel — Mélanie Watt
- Time to Sleep — Denise Fleming
- Over and Under the Snow — Kate Messner
The books are not included and they are not for sale here. They are library books, which is the point.
Page four
The science lesson
An eastern gray squirrel stores food in many small caches and recovers much of it using spatial memory and smell. A forgotten acorn may feed another animal or, in the right place, grow into an oak.
It opens with what the parent needs to know, written for someone who has not thought about it since school. Then a demonstration to do at the table, and one question afterward.
“How does the squirrel remember?”
Ask it once. Then be quiet and let the answer come, however long it takes.
And then the rest of it.
- The poems
- “The Squirrel” — traditional, said aloud once a day until it is theirs by Friday. Then “To a Mouse” — Robert Burns, read once on the last day and deliberately not explained.
- The activity
- Ten quiet minutes near a tree: tally each squirrel sighting, then notice what one animal is actually doing.
- The craft
- Build a model drey from twigs, leaves, moss, and grass; drip water over it and improve the shelter if the center gets wet.
- Math
- Counting, number bonds to ten, tally marks, which pile has more, and word problems to read aloud — all of it about squirrels.
- The copywork page
- “A squirrel hides more than it finds.” on three-line ruling — two lines traced, the rest left blank.
- A devotion, five days
- 5 days, two minutes each at the table — a verse, a sentence, and one line to pray together. Use your family’s preferred translation. Proverbs 6:6–8 · Genesis 8:22 · Psalm 147:8–9 · Philippians 4:19 · Psalm 136:25.
- Maple-cinnamon pumpkin seeds
- Four ingredients, about twenty-five minutes, and a careful cool-down on the pan. The child’s job and the adult’s job are written out separately, so nobody has to guess who holds the knife.
- What you will need
- Four books from the library, ten counters, a tree-viewing place, twigs and leaves, pumpkin seeds, and a printer.
Take the squirrels unit.
One purchase for the whole unit as a print-ready PDF. No account and no login — it arrives by email, and it is yours to print as often as you like for the children in your own house.
Here it is.
All five days of Apples, yours to print. A copy is on its way to your inbox as well — check the spam folder if it isn’t there in a few minutes.
Start with Monday: cut an apple across the middle instead of down through the stem, and look for the star.