Sloths are entertaining animals. I feel like they have been given more attention in pop culture in recent years. (Partially thanks to the funny sloth character in Zootopia, and Kristen Bell’s intense love of them). Why do we find these animals so enjoyable? Is it because they exhibit the one quality that we can’t seem to grasp? Slowing down and not getting caught up in today’s speedy lifestyle? For whatever reason, we decided to celebrate these cute animals by pairing some fun sloth activities with this adorable interactive children’s book about sloths!

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Sloths Are Slow: An Interactive Children’s Book was written by Kimberly Marino and illustrated by Mariya Stoyanova. This interactive book follows a 3 toed sloth named Lento as he goes about his day. The simple text introduces the reader to some interesting facts about sloths, from their childhood and movements, to their interactions with other animals.

Each page includes fun prompts for the reader, encouraging kids to interact with the animals on the pages as well. The illustrations are adorable, featuring the sweet wide-eyed sloth in great detail. Each page features vibrantly colored backgrounds, showing the environment that the sloth and his friends live in.

In addition to the sweet story, there are even more heartwarming things to note about the book. A portion of the proceeds from this book are donated to Gigi’s Playhouse – an organization that helps people with Down Syndrome. The story was also written for Thomas Scully, a boy who died of childhood cancer.

We had lots of fun pairing this interactive book with fun sloth activities!

Feeding a Sloth

In the book, there is a page that encourages the reader to follow dotted lines to “feed” the sloth by leading the leaves to his mouth. Since we are currently practicing cutting with scissors, this page inspired me to create a printable that does the same thing.

Print out a copy of this free printable page. Encourage little ones to use their scissors to cut across the line from the leaves to the sloth’s mouth. You can also use this with young kids to practice tracing and develop their pre-writing skills. My daughter loved the idea that she was feeding the sloth, so we will be using this to work on all kinds of skills.

Related Reading: The Benefits of Reading Interactive Books with Your Kids

Paper Plate Hanging Sloth

Throughout the book, Lento the sloth is hanging from various trees, so we decided to create our own hanging sloth. Cut a paper plate in half and encourage kids to paint or color it brown or gray. (You could also rip up brown paper and have them glue it on, as we did with these bear masks. This can help with fine motor skills as well.)

Once the plate half is covered and dry, cut out this printable sloth face and use glue to attach it to one end of the plate. You can then attach clothespins for the legs. Since my daughter loves scavenger hunts and finding things, we had a lot of fun hiding the sloth on one another and trying to find it.

Check this post for more interactive books for kids!

Sloth Races

Since sloths are notoriously slow, we decided to have some fun pretending to be sloths. So we started having sloth races. While in a normal race, you want to be the first person to reach the finish line, the exact opposite is true for a sloth race!

We started on one end of the room and began moving as slowly as possible, making our way to the other side. The only rule is that you have to be moving at all times. Trying to move slowly and take tiny steps forward definitely leads to lots of giggles and fits of laughter, making this a fun activity for the whole family!

Do you have any favorite sloth activities that you do with your kids? Share in the comments below!

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