YakYakYak

Do you remember how cool learning was back in the day? They had these really cool pictures that went with a letter from the alphabet and the word of the picture listed as well. It was fun to learn, like when would you learn the letter "M" .....

Capital "M", small "m" and a marmot!

Marmots are generally large ground squirrels. Those most often referred to as marmots tend to live in mountainous areas such as the Alps, Eurasian steppes, Carpathians, and Pyrenees in Europe and northwestern Asia; the Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, the Cascades, and Sierra Nevada in North America; and the Deosai Plateau in Pakistan and Ladakh in India. The groundhog, however, is also properly called a marmot, while the similarly-sized but more social prairie dog is not classified in the genus Marmota but in the related genus Cynomys.

Marmots typically live in burrows (often within rockpiles, particularly in the case of the Yellow-bellied Marmot), and hibernate there through the winter. Most marmots are highly social, and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially when alarmed.  Marmots mainly eat greens and many types of grasses, berries, lichens, mosses, roots and flowers.

And then there is the letter "Y" and we learn about the letter and another animal.  The Yak ....

Capital "Y", small "y" and the yak.

Yaks are herd animals. Wild yaks are among the largest bovids, with males standing about 6.6 to 7.2 ft tall at the shoulder and weighing up to 2,200 lbs and have a head and body length of 9.8 to 11 ft. The females weigh about one third of this and are about 30% smaller.  Both sexes have long shaggy hair to insulate them from the cold. Wild yaks can be brown or black. Domesticated ones can also be white. Both males and females have horns.  Yaks may live to more than twenty years.

Anyway, I was given these really cool learning "cards", the leftovers I am sure, but to my surprise, one, or should I say three, stood out for me!!!



And then there were three ...

I took the three cards, painted three 9 x 12 canvas boards and Mod Podge'd the three yaks.  It brought back a very familiar saying that my mother used on us (3) kids growing up.  Feeling a bit nostalgic, I could not pass up the fun in these particular cards. 

And so the story goes ..... all you do is .....

" YAK YAK YAK "