Hello Everyone!

If you haven’t already heard, we are starting something new here on Bobbledy Books. If you have already heard, you probably heard it HERE, because we just came up with this yesterday, and I don’t think news travels THAT fast. So, the long and short of it is that from here on out, we’re going to have a THEME OF THE WEEK.

And this week’s theme is (dum dum DUMMMMMmmmmmmM!!!!):

BEAVERS!!!

Our kick-off theme is only beavers because when we were talking about this idea, we kept using beavers as a miscellaneous stand-in. It would have felt kind of mean to choose something else at this point. So beavers it is. So the way this will work is that on Sundays, we’ll announce our theme and give you some facts and links to get you started thinking about the theme. On Mondays you can submit stories about the theme, on Tuesdays you can submit pictures about the theme, on Wednesdays we’ll have a quiz about the theme, and on Fridays we’ll compile all of the week’s info and award one kid a trophy for being a [insert theme here] expert.

So, here’s what we found to share with you about beavers:

Beaver Facts:

Beavers are rodents. Rodents are basically small furry animals whose front teeth keep growing and have to be kept in check by continuous gnawing. What a life!

There are two kinds of beavers – The American Beaver and the Eurasian Beaver. They are genetically incompatible, which means an American Beaver and a Eurasian Beaver can’t have any beaver babies. Too bad, because I bet they would have been cute!

Beavers have an extra set of eyelids that are clear so that they can see underwater. This extra eyelid is called a nictitating membrane (pronounced NIK-tih-tate-ing). I once impressed a teacher by casually mentioning nictitating membranes. I’m not sure if he was more impressed by the fact that I knew the word “nictitating” or by the fact that I had managed to casually mention it. And now you can impress a teacher too!

Beavers are excellent swimmers because of their large flat tail and webbed feet.They can swim up to 5 miles per hour and can stay underwater for up to FIFTEEN MINUTES! That’s long enough to travel 1.25 miles in one breath, if I’ve done my math right!

They have gigantic, sharp teeth that can chew through a full grown tree in hours! Much more useful than Dracula’s gigantic, sharp teeth!

In spite of spending their lives dealing with sticks and mud, you could say that beavers are a little fussy. They build their homes (called “lodges”) with two rooms – a smaller entry room to dry off in when coming from outside, followed by a larger den to hang out in once they’ve cleaned up a bit. Folks from the Northeast will recognize this as the “mud room” – a similar idea that humans who live in places with awful winters and cold muddy springs (Maine! Massachusetts! Vermont! New Hampshire!) use.

Here is a short video where you can see beavers in action! Spoiler alert: beavers totally kick butt swimming underwater!

Or you can visit National Geographic Kids for some more good stuff about beavers.

And tomorrow we’ll kick off Beaver Week with Matthew’s story about beavers. Hopefully, you all will add your stories in the comments section for everyone else to read too. The best story/drawing/quiz answer of the week wins a prize!

See you then!!