Animal Adaptations

 

Shake, shake! The leaves rustle as the snow leopard hides in a bush and gets ready to pounce on a small bird. 3…2…1…Pounce! The snow leopard grabs the bird with it’s sharp claws and starts ripping it’s pray to pieces.

Keeping Warm

The snow leopard’s habitat can be in the snow or mountains of central Asia. They don’t get cold in thew snow because of their thick coat of fur that keeps it warm. At night, when they sleep, they wrap their tails around them to keep warm. That is why their tails are 100cm long. They have wide and short nasal cavities so it warms the air before it gets to the lungs. Another way they keep warm is that a female snow leopard covers it’s home with it’s own fur. A female snow leopard weighs 34 to 54 kg. Snow leopards can also be found in trees, bushes and plants. They also store a layer of fat under their skin. They have to adapt to the cold. 

Hunting

Snow leopards have a coat that matches the colour of the snow so they can pounce on pray without being seen. Snow leopards can pounce up to 15 meters! Snow leopards pull their claws into their paw pads to keep their claws sharp and clean. They need to keep their claws sharp because they need to climb the snow and if their claws aren’t sharp they won’t be able to climb. The snow leopard needs to have sharp claws to grab onto it’s pray. 

Diet

Snow leopards eat goats, sheep, birds, monkeys and any other small mammal. 

Fun Fact

A snow leopard can’t roar but they can yowl really loudly. 

Book Week

Last week was book week and we did lots of book related activities.

First we had a guest author, Oliver Phommavah, come to our school and take us through a writing workshop. He gave us lots of ideas and writing tips about how to write a story and told us all about the books he has written. All his books that he had written had some twist of humour in them which I liked because I like reading funny stories and having a laugh! I am reading one of his books right now called Don’t follow Vee. It is about a girl who’s mum takes photos of her every second of her life to put up on instagram. Her whole life is out there along with 150,000 followers. One day she decides she has had enough. She is going to try to get her mum off instagram. She hates getting up in the morning and having a flash in her eyes because her mum is taking a pic. I think it is a really good book so far. I enjoy reading it because I like to read books from another porsons perspective. It doesn’t relate to me because my mum doesn’t use instagram. I really like reading about what happens in Vee’s life.

Another part of book week was a dress up day on Friday. We all came to school dressed up in different book characters. Everyone was creative and each costume was unique. I loved walking around at recess and lunch looking at everyones costumes. I dressed up as Billie B Brown, it was one of my favourite books when I was younger. 

I think a good information book must have real or drawn illustrations because it helps you picture what the text is about and it adds to the text. It should also include a few paragraphs of information and facts along with a heading. A information book should also include a page at the back or front that lists the websites or links where the authors got there information or images from. This is called Sources. But sometimes the authors or illustrators draw or paint there own images instead of getting images off the internet. People write information books because they can pass on knowledge about a certain topic.

My favourite shortlisted book from the shortlisted book category was called Sorry Day. It is a heartwarming and non fiction story. It is about a girl who is going to a presentation about sorry day with her mum. She accidentally tripped, falls over and when she gets up she can’t find her mum in the crowd. The book has a short story in it about the day white men came and took all the indigenous children away from there families. The book explained that we are now sorry to those who had there children taken away from them. In a library session at school, we read and explored all the books in the shortlisted book category and this book really stood out to me because it made me feel lots of different emotions and this is why it is my favourite book. It was a short story that meant so much and had so much meaning behind it because what it says in the story happened in real life. I would say it is a non fiction book that has a story in it. At the back of this book it has real photographs of what sorry day really looks like. It also has some real information about why and how we celebrate sorry day. It also had a little bit more information about what sorry day is.   

Overall book week was lots of fun. I really enjoyed it and I can’t wait for us to do it again next year.