A Wombat for Christmas!

Actually, friends, the title of today's holiday read is Christmas Wombat by Jackie French. I borrowed it from the library because it was new to me and I loved the cover art. Our Aussie friends are probably very familiar with wombat stories, but Americans, not so much. Anyway, I test-piloted it on my little group of RTI students
(first-graders) yesterday. They were very curious about what a wombat was. In the beginning of the story they received critical information about what a wombat spends his day doing. 

               “Slept. Scratched. Slept.”

Then we discovered that our little wombat friend was very, very, very, partial to carrots. It just so happened to be Christmas Eve, and people had started setting out cookies and milk for Santa, and big bunches of carrots for his hungry reindeer.

Our wombat (who we observed, looks sort of like a little bear cub and runs sort of like a little bunny) wins a stare-down with the reindeer and accidentally falls asleep on the runner of Santa's sleigh! 

The children in my group were delighted as they figured out that the wombat thought that the whole purpose of the trip around the world was to get more carrots! You will love this new (to me!) Christmas classic.

Click here to watch a video about the common wombat:

http://natgeotv.com.au/videos/animals/wombat-93AD3663.aspx


Here is a short and sweet coloring page as well!

http://www.supercoloring.com/pages/australian-wombat

Till Next Time,
Nancy