For some real fun and creativity try out this great 3D Meerkat Paper Model Activity.Your class can make their very own Sunny out of paper with this great activity. Encourage your students to keep this Meerkat and take him with them on their own travels. They can take pictures and show the rest of the class where Sunny has been. Who is Sunny the Meerkat?

An innovated version might involve Sunny trying to find a home at the seaside, in the supermarket, at an indoor play area – choose a place that will be familiar to the children. Or, if you would like to provide a little more challenge, you could also change the main character to another animal. This would mean that children’s versions could draw on information gained in their research. The written stories could then be made into a whole class book and included in the book area, read aloud in a story-share or recorded as a podcast. 6 Develop context & understanding Carry out some role-play activities with ‘Sunny’ in which he explores how he is feeling at different points in the story.

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Take photos of Sunny at the local park, eating something, in different weather, etc. Share these images with the children, explaining they where taken on Sunny’s latest adventure. Model writing a postcard from Sunny to his family, using the information headings to structure the content. The children can then conduct a guided tour of the school with Sunny, taking photos of him in different places, answering any questions he may have and ‘helping’ him join in activities. The children can then write their own postcard from Sunny about his trip to their school. 4 Did you know? Meerkat Mail is a lovely children's short story by Emily Gravett that follows Sunny the Meerkat as he goes off on his travels. Meerkat Mail is a favourite amongst lots of young children and using these resources can extend your children's learning. The title of the book uses alliteration. Can you make up other potential book titles that also use alliteration? Read Meerkat Mail with your class and show them the interactive features where your class can pull out and read Sunny's postcards to his family. Once you've got all your students on board with this great story, introduce some of these resources into your teaching to extend your students' learning. 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. Older children could perhaps select another animal from another location in the world, research that animal and location on Chromebooks/iPads, and write a series of postcards from that animal's perspective as it discovers unfamiliar environments. Or, perhaps as a September transition activity, children could use the postcard theme to write about their summer holidays.

Using this Empty Suitcase Activity your students can draw what they think Sunny the Meerkat would need on his travels around the world. This task gets your class thinking about what items they believe would be essential for travel and what they would like to take. This worksheet provides your students with a sense of independence as they make choices for Sunny. This activity is also a great drawing task and will help develop your students' fine motor skills and allows them to get creative. Talk for Writing across the Curriculum, Pie Corbett and Julia Strong (OUP, 2011) *includes Professor Know it All game What does this book teach you about meerkats? Use this information (along with your own research) to create a report about them. The story begins in the Kalahari Desert. Can you find out where this is? How far is it from where you live? There are endless possibilities for using this text, but if you are the kind of person who likes a bit of a sequence, read on… 2 Starting the journeyRead examples of nonchronological reports about animals and start to develop a bank of common features. Use role-play and games such as ‘Professor Know it All’* to develop the language and sentence constructions of reports. Once the children have learnt the text, then innovate with another animal, using facts gathered in the first week. Create a whole class report together orally and practise it, then allow the children to make up their own oral versions about the animal they researched in week one.