Z is for Zoo Day!

• Read “Dear Zoo: A Pop-up Book” by Rod Campbell
  • pop-up: This is a very cute book. There is a flaps version and this pop-up version. I love the pop-up version. “I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet…” and they send lots of different animals but none of them are quite right, until the last page. Cute. My kids love it.

• Zoo Animal Match
  1. Collect pictures of the animals from “Dear Zoo” from magazines or Microsoft Clipart or even pictures you’ve taken yourself at the zoo. I used the animal pictures here and shrunk them down. These are already colored and absolutely adorable! The animals in the story include:

     elephant giraffe lion camel

     snake monkey frog puppy

  2. Color the pictures
  3. Cut the pictures in half.
  4. Mix them up and let the kids make zoo animal matches!

• Read “Zookeeper” by Heather Miller
  • non-fiction: Check your library for any book about zookeepers. I love the books that have real life pictures in them.
• Zookeeper, May I? … a simplified version of Mother, May I.
  1. Stand at one end of the room and have the kids stand at the other end.
  2. You say, “Take 3 elephant steps forward.”
  3. Have the kids say, “Zookeeper, may I?”
  4. Say, “Yes, you may.”
  5. Repeat with other zoo animal steps:
     • 4 kangaroo hops
     • 2 snake slithers (they’ll think of something!)
     • 2 lion leaps
     • 3 frog jumps
  6. The first one to reach you can be the next zookeeper!

• Zoo Stamps
  1. Make several words strips with zoo animal names written on each (ELEPHANT on one, TIGER on another…)
  2. TIP: Ready to print word strips from ABCTeach here! Just click on Word Wall: Zoo.
  3. Call out a letter.
  4. Have the kids use a zoo animals stamp to stamp that letter. Or use any stamps you have. We don’t use stamps very often so my kids were thrilled!
  5. Repeat until all letters are stamped.
  6. If you want to continue the game, have them choose another zoo word strip.

• Read “Animal Strike at the Zoo. It's True!” by Karma Wilson … available here. 
  • Another fun one: we really enjoyed reading this book too. I love all of Karma Wilson’s book (she writes the bear books). The rhymes and illustrations are entertaining and flow just right.

 

• Trip to the Zoo!
  1. If possible, take a day trip to the zoo!
  2. If you want to, make a simple checklist of animals to look for.
  3. Or let your kids take a picture of each animal.

• Snack Idea: Animal Crackers

Good Night Gorilla (or Quiet)

We actually used these ideas during Q week for Quiet, but you could use them for G week as well. We had a fun time with this great book "Goodnight Gorilla" by Peggy Rathmann. There are not many words in the book but the kids love it. The gorilla sneaks around behind the zookeeper and opens up all the animal's cages as he's saying good night to them.

   

 

• Paint your own gorillas!
  1. After reading the story, we painted our own gorillas. The little wood cutouts were at Michael's for $0.29 each and the little foam brushes worked perfectly.
  2. Once they dried we added googly eyes (googly eyes make everything more fun) and a popsicle stick. Then we used our little gorillas to read through the story again.
• Zookeeper Locks & Keys
  1. My 3-year-old’s favorite part was when I pulled out the locks and keys. The gorilla in the story opens the locked cages with keys, so I collected a few locks that have color coordinating keys.
  2. Once he figured out how to get the key in and turn it the right way, he absolutely loved doing it over and over again.

Snack Idea: Bananas! (If you notice in the pictures, the little mouse is pulling a banana around with him on every page!)

Zoo & Zebra

I can’t believe we made it to Z week!

• Get lots of ZOO books at the library
• With your kids, look through all of your books to find pictures of zebras and point out the black and white stripes all over. What else do they notice about the zebras?   
• Paint a Zebra!
  1. Print out an outline of a horse. I love using Twisty Noodle for great coloring pages. It’s awesome because you can change the text above to anything you like. This was actually a horse coloring page, but I just changed it to zebra!
  2. Put on paint shirts (we use old shirts, cut up the back and secured with a safety pin) and mix up some black paint.
  3. Give the kids a paintbrush or Q-tip and let them paint stripes on their zebra!
  4. When they’re dry, you can cut them out.

Snack Idea: Have your snack on Zoo Pal plates! These were $1.99 at Safeway.