Books
We borrowed these books from the library for our zoo day. Instead of the hundreds of books that focus on individual animals, I tried to stay with the zoo in general! The kids' favorites here were Edward the Emu and Good Night, Gorilla.
Letter Recognition Activity
For today's letter recognition activity we pulled out the playdough and cookie cutters and tools. We hadn't done it in a long time. First Honey Pot spelled the word "zoo" and cut it out with her cookie cutters. And Little M&M made a couple of Z's.
Then they both got to work creating some zoo animals!
Here is our final group for our zoo. We have a giraffe, elephant, bear, two turtles, two seals and a snake. What a collection of animals!
Then we brought out the craft sticks and started creating cages for them!
Then Honey Pot's favorite part, the pretend play. She created bowls of food for the cages, and we played with our animals until they fell apart. Fun activity!
Zoo Animals - Body Coverings
I found this printable from Natural Beach Living. I thought it would be fun to learn about the different body coverings that exist among animals. Honey Pot actually really enjoyed this, and did very well! First she'd pick up an animal, and she'd tell me what its body was covered in (feathers, shells, fur, skin or scales). Then I'd asked her which column to place it in, which also had her sounding out the words for some reading practice. It was a nice little lesson!
Zoo Animals - Counting and Number Recognition
I found another fun printable that was more at Little M&M's level from Pre-K Pages. In the future, I'd have him use pom poms instead of gems, as they're easier to grab with his tongs. But he had fun with this and counted out all the gems he needed.
And then Honey Pot had to give it a try too. :) This kept the two of them quite busy for a while.
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And, feel free to take a peek at Honey Pot's Letter Z unit from last year,
where we sorted zoo animals based on their habitats!
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