Zoo Week!!

This was a really great week at our house! The kids loved learning more about Zoo animals and we had a very fun week. I decided to post all the activities and themes after we do them for a few reasons. Mostly, I think its more realistic to give you an idea of what really happens in a week at our home :) Lots of times I find loads of great ideas and end up doing only one or two....and thats okay! The point for me is to enjoy my children more and hopefully teach them a little something in the process! So these are the activities we did to learn all about zoo animals last week :)

We started off by reading one of our new favorite books, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" This is a great book that mentions lots of different animals you will see at the zoo. Plus I just adore anything with Eric Carle, so there you have it! This was easy enough for Skylar to read and by the end of the week the kids recognized all the animals and knew what sounds they make.

What fun would Zoo Week be without a trip to the...ZOO! Our local zoo isn't the best zoo out there, but the kids love it and I love taking my kids to the same place I went when I was little :)

Just to make it a little more interesting I threw together 2 different scavenger hunts for the kids. For my son that is only 2 I made one that had pictures of animals that he could circle when we saw the animal.


For my girls that are 4 and 6 I made an alphabet scavenger hunt, where they had to find an animal that started with each letter of the alphabet. It was really fun to see them running around looking at all the signs, desperately searching for an X :) Plus it was a great chance for my oldest daughter to work on her handwriting and my 4 year old to work on letter recogition.



We only got around to doing one craft last week...but it was a good one! I have mentioned before how much I love doing anything with my kids handprints so I thought of one that would go along with our theme. I simply drew a circle on a big piece of paper, let the kids choose their color of fingerpaint, and they went at it. They dipped their hands in the paint and then did handprints all the way around the circle to create a lions mane. After it dried they drew in the lions face, I think they turned out so cute!















This was Britton's masterpiece...with a little help from mom :)






Every week I try to pick one letter for us to focus on. I print out an upper and lower case letter, put them on cute paper, and stick them up right by our kitchen table. Every morning at breakfast we talk abou the letter and what sound it makes, and I also print off tracer pages of the letter. Last weeks letter was Z for Zebra and Zoo :)

Finally our fun snack of the week :) I dubbed these Monkey Pops....and the kids loved em! I simply covered bananas in peanut butter and then dipped them in some melted chocolate. Its amazing what a fun name will do for a pretty boring snack ;)

It was a really great week, and I feel like the kids actually learned something! Please let me know if you have any fun Zoo Week ideas, I am always looking for more ways to enjoy and teach my children. Have a great week everyone!! :)