This week, my little boy decided he wanted to study CHEETAHS! This shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve read any of the rest of my blog. Zachary loves animals. If they’re a predator, he likes them even more, and if they’re FAST, they quickly become something of an obsession.
So I started looking up information, we watched a Wild Kratts episode about cheetahs and headed off to the library to find lots of books. Thankfully, this was a REALLY easy topic!
Math/Reading Worksheet
So my Printer is Officially OUT of toner….. which sucks, because I made some awesome cheetah printable that I didn’t get to use. SO, I figured I’d just share them with YOU so SOMEONE might get some use out of them. We ended up just re-making them on the white-board, so he got to do the work…. just didn’t get the awesomeness of having the actual worksheet to do.
I’ve been wanting to introduce word problems for a while, because Zachary LOVES math, but not so much reading, but I still decided to go slow. I did 2, REALLY simple word problems and Zachary LOVED it! Because of my evil printer, I had to recreate it on our double sided white board, so we did the reading on the front, and the math on the back. I hope your kids like the real worksheets though!
Isn’t the Artwork LOVELY on this! (I swear the cheetah is EATING the gazelle…. nothing else…. there’s even a giant “cookie bite” type thing out of the gazelle’s back!)
The text on the bottom of the worksheet mentions the cheetah cub’s “mantle” Here’s an ADORABLE picture to illustrate that! You gotta love those eyes, just wanna snuggle it till it pops………. and I’m getting off topic…. sorry about that!
Cheetah ART
Seeing Spots
I had a couple of idea of what I wanted to do. One stuck out though. One of the most distinctive features of a cheetah is its beautiful SPOTS. So I made this little drawing. 
Again, my artwork is a bit weird, BUT I had fun anyway…. just ignore that extra chest line… it doesn’t exist… and these aren’t the droids you’re looking for (Is my nerd showing? Sorry I’ll tuck that back in).
THEN I gave it to Zachary, his Job, ADD THE SPOTS! He basically took a pencil and went haywire with it. It was great.
Random Suggestion: You could also do this with a BIG piece of paper and do “Celery Stamping” Its where you take a piece of celery, cut it so you have a clean curved edge, dip it in ink or paint and use it like a stamp. It would make perfect cheetah spots!
Drawing a Cheetah
We checked out the book “How to Draw African Animals“Its from the “how to draw” series that includes pretty much anything a kid would be interested in drawing.
This one has Lions, and Cheetahs, and Elephants…(I want to say Oh My even though that’s totally not the reference).
So Here’s the Page we used…. 
And Here is the 5 year old’s result:
He erased the first one because “The tail couldn’t be long enough”. I was surprised that he decided to add details like grass and the stripes on his tail. He normally does the whole “Circle for a head, circle for a body, lines for tail and legs… done” thing. BUT this time he actually got into it. I was quite proud of him.
Here’s my result…. just so I can show off a little bit. It’s not as good as I wanted it to be, but it’s not bad!
Starting Cursive Writing
Zachary has, for quite a while now, tried to imitate my loopy form of handwriting. His G’s are almost illegible as print because he likes to add extra loops to the bottom. SO we started cursive. I know there’s some major debate about the
I just typed in “cursive Writing PDF”… and this popped up. I tried to get a bit of info about the creator and everything…. but the rest of the site is basically blank…. not sure why…. its weird. BUT you can download the PDF!
AGAIN, because of my evil printer and its lack of toner (I swear its faking it just to get a break) I had to re-create the experience by hand…. oh well, at least it still looks pretty. AND I was able to add his name to the bottom.
I put this orange sheet into a protector, so Zachary can use a dry-erase marker on it to practice individual letters.
We started with the two most common letters in the english alphabet. A and E.
Zachary actually did BETTER at forming the swooping lines of cursive, than he does at forming the print letters. Its kinda fun.
Of course, when I looked at THIS INFOGRAPH about how cursive helps with cognitive development and is actually a bit easier to learn for a tiny person, it all made sense!.
Now I’m not going to REQUIRE Zachary to use cursive if he prefers print, but I am going to teach it to him.
BOOKS!
By Diana Estigarribia
(Wow, that’s a last name)
This book is your basic, Cheetah overview. It has great pictures (even some really adorable cubs, and some fairly tasteful prey pics). And it even goes over how cheetahs have come very endangered in the wild. Great book all around.
By Leslie Patricelli
This book is all about the illustrations. It basically says “faster faster” over and over again as the dad in the book pretends to be faster and faster animals. He pretends to be a dog, a rabbit, etc. going “faster” each time. Really cute and it made Zachary feel like he was REALLY READING because it was so repetitive and he didn’t have any issues with any of the words.
By Matto H. Barfuss
Amazon doesn’t have a good picture of this book…. Which I think is a bit ironic, because its a book about a PHOTOGRAPHER! He was in the serenghetti…. serengeti…. (Wait, How are you supposed to spell that?) Serengeti National Park (OH, you have to capitalize it) and he found a mother cheetah with her cubs. They end up letting him hang out with them until the babies grow up. It’s an awesome story with some GREAT pictures!
By Wesley Cartier
This is an easy-reader book that Zachary picked out. Its Level 2, but he didn’t have many problems with it. The story is along the same lines as “Faster Faster”. The boy is running in the park and pretends he is a series of REALLY FAST animals. Zachary had to try it out after he was done reading the book, so that got him out of the house (yay, I got to make dinner without interruptions) and MOVING! So he was tired by the time dinner was done and happy to sit and eat! Win all around!
Things I Learned
This might be my favorite part of the blog.
- Cheetahs can run FAST, But NOT for very long! If they run at full speed for more than 18 seconds (yeah, not very long at all), Their BRAIN COOKS! So they have to sneak up REALLY close to their prey to be able to catch it.
- Cheetahs are one of the only cats who hunts during the day!
- Cheetahs DON’T ROAR! They chirp…. like a bird…. its weird…. Here… Watch this Video. Its a bit awesome
- When cheetahs purr (and they do it a lot!) It can be heard from over 20 feet away! I thought My cat was loud when she purred
- Cheetahs only catch about half of the animals they chase!… probably because they have to stop pretty quickly if the prey is getting away.
- Cheetah moms can have as many as 10 cubs in a litter. BUT most of the time they have 3 to 5.
- Only 1 in 3 cubs survives to 2 years old 🙁
- There is one cheetah mom who is said to have mothered at least 10% of all the cheetahs in the Southern Serengeti. She is called “Supermom“
And Just for fun MORE PICTURES OF BABY CHEETAHS
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