Dessert Time at the ZooQuarium

Here's a short poem to help you practice S, Z, and SH sounds.

Dessert Time at the Zooquarium.

A zebra sipped a milkshake.
A serpent swam in cream.
Hippos splashed and frolicked.
In a gurgling chocolate stream.

The zoo was full of visitors 
who buzzed like busy bees.
And watched the sharks swim lazily 
through orange soda seas.

The sounds were like an orchestra.
As creatures chewed and slurped.
At closing time, the whole place shook.
An elephant had burped.

© 2024 Barry Kahn

Permission is hereby granted to use this poem for educational purposes only with attribution to the author. 

Please see the transcript for the full podcast text.

Intro & Outro Music: La Pompe Du Trompe by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Transcript

Here's a little poem to give you practice with the S sound.

Sss.

The Z sound.

Zzz.

And the SH sound.

Shhh.

Quiet.

The baby's sleeping.

So S, Z, and SH.

Shh.

Listen to the poem two times and then I'll break it apart for practice.

Dessert time at the zooquarium.

A zebra sipped a milkshake.

A serpent swam in cream.

Hippos splashed and frolicked.

In a gurgling chocolate stream.

The zoo was full of visitors who buzzed like busy bees.

And watched the sharks swim lazily through orange soda seas.

The sounds were like an orchestra.

As creatures chewed and slurped.

At closing time, the whole place shook.

An elephant had burped.


I don't usually explain vocabulary in my podcasts because you can look words up on the internet.

Or you can simply throw it into a translator like DeepL and get a translation of the whole podcast.

But this one has a lot of vocabulary in it.

So I'll go over some of it very quickly.

First in the title, the word dessert.

D-E-S-S-E-R-T.

Dessert is the sweet that you eat after dinner.

So that's dessert.

Not to be confused with desert.

D-E-S-E-R-T.

Like the Sahara Desert or the Gobi Desert.

So this is dessert.

A zebra sipped a milkshake.

When you sip, you drink a little bit at a time.

When you sip hot coffee, you sip it just a little bit so you don't burn your tongue.

Milkshake is a combination of milk and ice cream.

Sometimes with a banana thrown in.

A serpent swam in cream.

Cream is the top of the milk.

If you have milk fresh from a cow, the cream floats on the top.

Hippo.

Hippo is short for hippopotamus.

And it's a big animal that lives in Africa.

It will kill you if it gets the chance.

They're very large and they like to swim in rivers.

To frolic is to play, to have fun.

The children frolicked on the playground.

So when you frolic, you're entertaining yourself, having fun.

Gurgling.

To gurgle is a noise, a sound.

A stream, which is like a very small river with rocks and sticks and stuff in it will make sounds as it flows.

And we often say those are gurgling sounds.

Little babies, when they're two, three months old and they begin to vocalize, they begin to talk.

Not in real language, but they make speech sounds and we often say, "Oh, the baby's very happy.

Listen to her gurgle."

So, just random noises.

Let's see.

Shark.

Sharks are those big things in the ocean that like to eat people.

Orange soda, like Fanta.

The sounds were like an orchestra.

Be careful of the pronunciation.

Orchestra.

And the word creature, I know it's spelled like "creatur," but it's "cre-cher."

Cre-cher.

It's just one vowel sound in the first syllable.

Cree.

Creature.

So, you're eating food and slurped.

If you're eating soup, you might make a slurping noise.

[slurping sounds...]

That's slurping.

Some animals slurp and sometimes people slurp.

At closing time, the whole place shook.

Be careful of the pronunciation.

Shook.

Look.

Book.

Took.

Shook.

Past tense of the verb to shake.

And an elephant had burped.

When air comes up from your stomach and out of your mouth after eating and you go, Blah.

That wasn't a very good burp, but that's what you do when you burp.

Air comes out of your mouth, usually after eating.

Belch is a synonym for burp.

And that's it.

Oh, and zooquarium.

Zooquarium" is not a real word.

I made it up.

I just combined "zoo" and "aquarium" because I wanted to put the sharks in the poem and the orange soda seas.

So, a zoo plus an aquarium would be a zooquarium.

Okay.

Now, let's practice.


In closing, I will remind you that the letter S in English, the written letter S, can represent an S sound or a Z sound.

A good example is the word "seas" S-E-A-S: "through orange soda seas."

The first S is pronounced S.

And the final S is pronounced like a Z.

So the word is "seas".

"Seas" starts with an S sound, ends with a Z sound.

The word "visitors"--the zoo is full of visitors-- has two S's.

They are both pronounced with a Z sound.

Visitors.

Visitors.

You can't tell just by looking at the spelling of a word in English how to pronounce S.

There are some rules but the most important thing to do is listen, listen, and listen some more.

Good luck!