The
Monarch
Award:
Illinois'
K-3
Children's Choice Award
2008
Master List
Sponsored by
the
Illinois
School Library Media Association
2008 Nominee: Brave Dogs, Gentle Dogs: How They Guard SheepSimple text and expressive photographs demonstrate how guardian dogs are raised with sheep and instinctively know that their job is to protect the herd from predatory animals in the Rocky Mountains.
Author/Illustrator: Cat Urbigkit
Book
Activities
- Discussion questions: Point out that this is a photo essay. The author is also the photographer and the sheep rancher. Predict shat preditors might want to harm the sheep? How do the dogs protect the sheep? Compare the bond of the sheep and dogs to the bond between Owen and Mzee.
- Language arts: Explore many sheep idioms such as "pull
the wool over
their eyes" in Bad Boys by
Margie Palatini.
- Writing: Write a journal from the point of view of the
sheep, the guardian dog or a preditor.
- Math: Make a graph of basic facts about the sheep and the
dogs. Weight, age, number of babies, etc.
- Science: Research the breeds of dogs used for guardian or
herding dogs.
- Social Studies: Learn about service dogs: police dogs,
seeing eye dog, etc.
- Drama: Write a script of what a sheep would say to a dog
and vice versa. Act it out.
- Cooking/Food: Make sheep out of large and mini
marshmallows.
- Art: Make textured pictures of the sheep and dogs using
yarn, wool, cotton balls, etc.
- Music: Sing Baa Baa
Black Sheep, Mary Had a Little
Lamb.
- Movement:
Related Books
Puppies, Puppies Everywhere! by Cat Urbigkit
A Young Shepherd by Cat Urbigkit
Babe, The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith
Sheep in a Jeep books by Nancy Shaw
Hardworking Puppies by Lynn Reiser
Wool Gathering: A Sheep Family Reunion: Poems by Lisa Wheeler
Bad Boys by Margie Palatini
Borreguita and the Coyote by Verna Aardema
Websites
2008 Nominee Resources