Books We Love: The Photo Ark

Like any homeschool family, we love books! We have thousands and thousands of them in our home. Every room has a bookshelf and there are a few in the hallway or maybe even in the bathroom at times.

I wanted to take a moment each month to highlight a book that we love and share it with you. This month I let my 5 year old help and he wanted to share one of his favorites, The Photo Ark.

We bumped in to National Geographic The Photo Ark: One Man's Quest to Document the World's Animals at our local library and fell in love! Amazing photographer Joel Sartore has thousands of mesmerizing photos in this book and we loved looking through it over and over and over. 

There are pictures of everything from bugs and sea life to birds and mammals. I let my little guy point out a few of his favorites, which were mostly the creepy and crawly things of course. Does anything else matter when you're 5?

Some of the pictures are collections of similar animal times, others are full page spreads, up close and personal with some of the mysterious and magnificent creatures. 

This book is well worth the investment but is also likely at your library as well! We spent weeks looking up various animals we didn't even know existed, researching our favorites to learn more about them, and drawing pictures of any and all of them! 

If you're looking for something to jump start your return to school after the holiday breaks, I highly recommend getting a copy of this book and letting your kids get excited about the animals pictured in this book. Have them draw a different one every day, write a paper about their favorite critter, launch a unit study off of the shape/size/color of a favorite animal... It won't take much to make this book into a fun learning experience no matter the age of your kiddos!

Happy Reading! 

(p.s. You can also follow Joel Sartore on Instagram and see some of his amazing photos there! It'll give you a taste of what's in the book!)