The Animal Adventure Club, Isla, Buzz, Gracie and Lexi are always keen to learn more about the environment and the wildlife around them. Michelle Sloan‘s heart-warming adventure stories for early readers are packed full of fun facts about Scottish animals and top tips for enjoying the outdoors safely. These activity sheets based on The Baby Red Squirrel Rescue are ideal for young environmentalists aged six and up.

Red Squirrel Fact File

In the latest heart-warming adventure story from Michelle Sloan, the Animal Adventure Club must rescue three baby red squirrels. How much do you know about these endangered creatures? Use our red squirrel fact file to test your knowledge!

What do we look like?

• We have reddish fur and tails, and tufty ears.
• When we are born, we don’t have any hair at all!

Where do we live?

• We live in nests called dreys.
• Dreys are balls made of twigs. Inside, leaves, moss and grass keep us warm.
• Three-quarters of British squirrels live in Scotland.

What do we like to eat?

• We love to eat pine seeds. In one year, one of us can eat the seeds of 20,000 cones!
• We also love nuts, fungi, shoots and berries.
• Occasionally, we also eat birds’ eggs.
• We can tell if a nut is rotten inside its shell just by shaking it in our paws!

Fun Facts

• We are rare: there are only about 140,000 of us in Britain. (There are more than 2 million grey squirrels.)
• When we are babies, we need our mums to feed us until we are ten weeks old.
• We like an afternoon nap, especially when the weather is warm.
• We can swim, but it’s hard work!

Learn to Build a Den

Gracie, a member of the Animal Adventure Club, knows all about surviving in the outdoors. When the team heads off on an island camping trip in The Baby Red Squirrel Rescue, she gathers branches and moss to make a cosy den to sleep in. Find a clearing in a forest and have a go yourself!

You will need:

• Two long, sturdy sticks with a Y shape at one end
• One very long stick (about the same height as you)
• Lots of smaller sticks, as needed
• Moss and leaves to stuff gaps, as needed

Instructions:

Make the entrance to your den by taking the two long sticks with the Y-shapes at the ends and slotting them together to make an A shape.

 

 

Next, prop the Y-shaped end of the long stick – or ridge pole – into the ground and rest the other end on the top of the entrance to your den.

 

To make the walls, gather up lots of small branches. Place them close together along the length of the ridge pole.

Finally, weave in leaves or thinner, bendier branches. Add some moss too, like squirrels do in their dreys, to make your den super cosy!

Morse Code

When the Animal Adventure Club find themselves stranded on an island, they use a torch to signal for help in Morse code. Download our Morse code activity sheet to have a go at decoding some Animal Adventure Club words.

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