Nocturnal Animal Report: Hedgehogs

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Researching and writing up an Animal Report is a great way to learn more about your favourite animal.

This week the 2nd Grade Blogging Team is sharing activities all about Nocturnal Animals.

My 7 year old son has been busy working on writing up animal reports in school this term. And he was keen to show off his new research skills at home, so we embarked on a special nocturnal animal report about his current favourite animal, a Hedgehog.

What is a nocturnal animal?

Nocturnal animals are characterised by carrying out most of their activity during the night-time and then sleeping during daylight hours. Animals such as Owls, Bats, Cats and Hedgehogs all have a heightened sense of smell, hearing and sight, which help them to stay safe from predators and adapt to their darker surroundings.

What is an Animal Report?

An animal report is a collection of facts and information about a specific animal, which is presented in a logical and neatly presented manner. Clear headings and full sentences are used throughout the report and writing is supplemented by relevant drawings or clippings from newspapers or magazines.

Topics to research about your animal include:

Diet
Habitat
Appearance
Characteristics
Predators
Fun Facts

Read here how to get hands on with an apple to help your 2nd grader grasp basic fractions.

How to research an animal report

Writing an animal report provides your 2nd grader with a great introduction to conducting independent research at home. This is something they will do more and more of as they move up through school and will be a very valuable skill in later life.

Sources to research an animal report:

Search the internet.
Take a trip to the library and look at some animal books.
Newspapers and magazines for pictures to cut out to embellish your report.

Nocturnal Animal Report: A Hedgehog

My 7 year old son is fascinated by hedgehogs and quickly choose this as the topic for his nocturnal animal report at home.

He began by doing a supervised internet search. He was immediately drawn to the YouTube links and happily watched away and took notes as he went along. He was fascinated by one video in particular about how to tame a hedgehog to become your pet. But I’m not sure that this would really be fair to the hedgehog, who is probably much happier living under a hedge.

He also found a really useful website called Hedgehog Street, which was full of information about hedgehogs and how we can help preserve them. Unfortunately they seem to be on the decline in the wild and this organisation is stepping up the campaign to protect them. Wouldn’t it be sad if there were no hedgehogs in the world?

Does your 2nd grader love making up stories? Show them how to put their ideas into their own Photo Comic Strip.

Liam found out lots of interesting information about hedgehogs to go into his nocturnal animal report including:

They get their name from the place they most love to hang out, in hedgerows.
They love to eat all kinds of creepy crawlies.
They have spikes to protect them from predators.
They are happy in rural and urban environments.
They can roam upto 2 km in a single night.

There are many different ways to structure an animal report and we decided to make our own recycled notebook to record Liam’s findings, using an old brown paper bag and some wool to attach the pages together.

He took great care to draw a neat picture onto the front of his report and then was very specific about the contents. First he wrote about the hedgehogs habitat, then their food and finished of with some fun facts.