The Perfect Pet by Samantha Bell is a fun way to incorporate living books with science and learn more about animal classification.
As a homeschool mom, Samantha Bell wanted to find a way to make learning animal classification easy and memorable. The Perfect Pet follows a child’s search for a pet that his or her mother will approve of. Having to search through the different classes of animals and considering habitat needs, will the child ever find the perfect one?
The “For Creative Minds” section of fun activities, as well as a complete teacher’s guide available as a free download on the Arbordale website, gave me so many ideas for activities to incorporate into our science lesson on animal classification. These extras provide enough resources to turn The Perfect Pet into a complete unit study on animal classification. For classroom teachers, the cross-curricular activities cover language arts, science, math, and art, with state and core standards listed for reference.
We use several Arbordale titles in our homeschool, because they are such an easy way to incorporate many subjects. Plus, our living books approach to all subjects is easily accomplished through books like this. I also like how this publisher provides resources that both classroom teachers and homeschoolers can use and benefit from.
Samantha’s illustrations are enchanting, and my boys know about her love of art first-hand as they’ve been fortunate to take several art classes from her.
Each animal is rendered in detail, and even my youngest, who doesn’t understand what Kingdom Animalia is all about enjoys looking at the pictures as I read to him. The rhyming text is perfect for independent early readers and is fun for him to read aloud.
The Perfect Pet complements our hands-on classification activity, found here.
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This is a great way to introduce animal classification without the kids even knowing. The illustrations are fun and colorful.
Picture books are a fun and sneaky way to teach almost anything. I don’t think kids ever get too old for them, either. Thanks for stopping by, Kim!
That is adorable!! What a great book for kids. I want the tiger for a pet…but my husband might not approve. :/
My son has a stuffed tiger as his constant companion. He’d love a real one, too!
The drawings are adorable and my daughter would have loved this book, any book, on animals when she was younger. And, sssh…she’s a bit of a science nerd! Thanks for sharing this great book to teach the kids a lesson.
Thanks so much, C. Lee! It’s great to hear about girls who dig science!
What a cute book. My son loves animals I think he would enjoy this book. I’m going to pin it so I can order it when my budget allows it. thank you for sharing!
Thanks Kim! You might be able to request it from the library.
That sounds awesome! I’ll have to look into more of these books for our homeschooling
L. E., the free resources at Arbordale really turn their books into complete unit studies. We’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the ones we’ve used.