There are many entertaining and informative children’s books that feature squirrels. Try titles like, “Nuts to You!” by Lois Ehlert, “Hello Squirrels! Scampering Through the Seasons” by Linda Glaser, and “The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin” by Beatrix Potter. Read these books for story time and discuss with your kindergartens the things they reveal about squirrels and the way that they live — their fondness for living in trees and the way that they gather and store nuts, for example.
Find a printout that shows the main parts of a squirrel’s body, like the one from Enchanted Learning. Go over each part with your students and talk about what you think each body part is good for — for instance, claws help them climb trees, big eyes help them to see well and tails help them to balance. Grey squirrels are tree climbing squirrels, so they have big bushy tails like in the picture. Show them pictures of similar small animals and ask them to point out why each one isn’t a squirrel.
If you live in a wooded area where squirrels are common, particularly if you have them on your school campus, take the children out for a short walk. Together search for squirrels or signs of their habitation, such as tracks, scat or nests in hollows of trees. Squirrel droppings look like small, light brown raisins. Collect leaves and nuts from trees where you see squirrels and use them to decorate your classroom.
Print out squirrel coloring pages like the ones available at DLTK. Have children color the pages, and glue cotton balls to the tail to make it fluffy. Spritz lightly with paint or water with a little gray dye or food coloring in it. Decorate the rest of the paper with leaves. For a bit of math, have all the children sample different varieties of nuts and make a graph together of which kinds of nuts they like.