The other key link is to Geography - learning about the Kalahari Desert, and, in one class, they used that as a starting-off point to compare their local area to different countries which I think was a National Curriculum objective. Distinctive illustrations and lift-the-flap postcards make it a joy to share with children, who will also enjoy spotting the shadowy jackal lurking in the background of each picture. Using this Empty Suitcase Activity your students can draw what they think Sunny the Meerkat would need on his travels around the world. Sunny presents a cheery personality that children can easily connect with, and the humour within his postcards carry a lighthearted feeling throughout the narrative.

As he endures too much rain, too much dark, and slimy food, he decides that there really is no place like home, and back he goes, grateful for all the annoyances (and comfort) his family provides.

Meerkat mobs tends to stick together - playing together, eating together, even sleeping together - and Sunny's family, living in the hot, dry Kalahari Desert, is no exception. The illustrations convey as much as the text, and children can be helped to understand events, feelings, character details and motivations by close reading of both. But as he travels from the barnyard through the forest to the city, Sunny realizes there's no place like home.

Ultimately - spoiler alert - he decides that his home at the Kalahari Desert, where his family is, is the perfect choice. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.Read in a Doctor's waiting room, this is a very cute children's picture book about Sunny the Meerkat who gets tired of his extended over-exuberant close knit family in the desert and goes off to visit relatives all over the world looking for a better place to live. Use role-play and games such as ‘Professor Know it All’* to develop the language and sentence constructions of reports. Emily Gravett is twice winner of the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal and the Nestlé Children's Book Prize Bronze Award for Wolves and Little Mouse's Big Book Of Fears. I've encountered its use in Year 1 across multiple schools, but I think it'd work for any KS1 or KS2 class.

But from the watery world of the Marsh Mongoose to the nocturnal lifestyle of the Malagasy Mongoose, Sunny just doesn`t fit in. The book could also be used as an introduction to letter and postcard writing and is very engaging and interactive with the flap open postcards which makes it a great treat for being read on the carpet. This entertaining picture book, with its rich illustrations, carries an important environmental message. He sends back a postcard from each place he stays, inserted into the book as a flap for children to lift and read the message on the back.He sends postcards home to his family and at first they are full of enthusiasm, but as the trip goes on and he has to stay with family who stay up all night, to those that live in swamps, to those who eat eggs off farms, he decides that maybe his own family is just right for him! We learn interesting facts about the different animals, such as that Hornbills warn mongooses of danger, so they don’t have guard-duty, like the meerkats.