The Secret Zoo Reading Unit

Over the past few weeks we have been reading The Secret Zoo. It is a fun book about 3 kids, who need to save their friend form the zoo. It is an adventurous tale, which my littles loved. They definitely got into and this was one I had an easy time breaking down and finding activities to go along with it. I want to post what we did and how I broke it all down.


Day 1-  Pages 1-11, which includes the prelude. We talked about what a prelude was. We made our own paper journals and decorated the covers. We also read Animals in the Zoo: A rookie Reader Science Book

Day 2- Pages 12-20. I printed out this picture of a Monkey. He became our picture of Mr. Tall Tail. I also used the alphabet and numbers to write a secret message for them to decode on the back. They thought this was pretty cool.

Day 3- Pages 21-29. We did this Hummingbird letter activity to go along with our reading. We also read Counting at the Zoo & did counting with animal crackers.

Day 4- Pages 30-44. We made this Polar Bear Craft.

Day 5- Pages 45-50 We played a concentration game I printed off from HERE.
We also read Night Animals and talked about what Nocturnal meant.


Day 6- Pages 51-60. We played hide and seek with stuffed animals.
We also read Desert Animals at Night and did this craft.

Day 7- Pages 61-68 We made a Cheetah Craft from dltk-kids.com

Day 8- Pages 69-74. We read Five Little Monkey's and Made Monkey Cards to send to our Pen Pals.

Day 9- Pages 75-85. We did this Penguin counting activity and made a Snazzy Penguin treat.

Day 10- Pages 86-94 We did this Lion Craft to work on our cutting skills. W also read Dear Zoo.

Day 11- Pages 95-107  Make Monkey Pudding and read Monkey and Me

Day 12- Pages 108-117 We read Turtle Splash! and we used this print out for a math game. I gave them a math problem and then once the answered it they colored in the answer on their sheet. The first person to finish coloring their tutrle won.

Day 13- Pages 118-126 Zoo Animal Graphing and we will read Mr. Peek and the misunderstanding Zoo

Day 14- Pages 127-136 We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear and We did this tracing page.

Day 15- Pages 137-149 We read Hiding Hippos: Counting From one to Ten and we did this cut and paste craft.

Day 16- Pages 150-158 We read The Dodo and The flight of the Dodo

Day 17- Pages 159-170 We will do this dot-to-dot sheet and read Appaloosa Zebra

Day 18- Pages 171-179 We did Zoo Math with these math mats. I gave them a subtraction problem and they figured it out using animal crackers.

Day 19- Pages 180-194 We watched Wiggly Safari. A great one for learning about a lot of animals, in a fun way with songs :> We also did this  Lion Craft from Make Learning Fun

Day 20- Pages 195-204 We had ants on a log, while reading this day

Day 21- Pages 205-217 We made Animal cupcakes

Day 22- Pages 218-227 Make a Flag of our own

Day 23- Pages 228- to the end :> We talked about what an afterward means and what we liked best about the book. We wrote a little paragraph about our favorite part.

This was a much longer unit than when I did Stuart Little, but it turned out to be a great opportunity to learn about a lot of different animals. Overall I think this unit went well and I am excited to plan out more reading units to enjoy with my littles. Hope you have fun reading with your littles today!

We also ended this unit with a trip to our local Zoo. It was small, but Miss Priss and bubba enjoyed it. The zoo also offered a great coupon online, which helped us in going as well.