Inside a Zoo in the City

This week we have a jungle animal theme…but I picked up zoo books from the library. We will be reading “Inside a Zoo in the City’ by Alyssa Satin Capucilli. We love her Biscuit the dog books! This one is a bit of a rebus, so it will be interested to see how Munchkin does helping me read along.

Our plan for the week is as follows:

	Art	Sensory	Paperwork	Practical/Fine Motor
Tuesday	zoo do-a-dots		zoo tot pack	feeding a lion
Thursday	zoo sticker scent	playdough	zoo tot pack	lacing cards

 

Anytime tray: lion and elephant puzzles

Sensory bin: popcorn, jungle animals, play mat, leaves, corks

Monday

Since there was no bin last week, Munchkin didn’t go looking for a new one right away, however when she found it, she was excited! We named several of the animals, and she set them up on the playmat, with food strewn about the place. I showed her how to balance felt leaves on top of the corks to make trees.

Tuesday

I set up Munchkin’s trays after her nap – we had a good assortment today! I could tell that she really wasn’t sure which of about three trays to pick first, but she hasn’t seen any matching in a few weeks, and so matching with a dry erase marker one! She had some trouble using the pen today, and just worked on it for a couple of minutes – though she loved erasing the marker! We came back to this as her last activity of the day, and she spent a long time completely scribbling over the lion, erasing it, and repeating this several times.

Next, she was interested in a Zoo Book kit we’d been given in a busy bag swap. It was a simple book, and foam stickers for one per page. Munchkin was able, for the first time, to peel the backing off of the foam stickers, and stuck them down. The flamingo was a new animal for us, but I think she knew the rest. It’s also been a while since we had dot markers out. I printed a few pages for her, and she went to town. She also discovered that the lids stack…and may have coloured her whole left hand purple…

We did a little more sticking next, with some animal stickers and a jungle sticker scene. Then, Munchkin FINALLY picked the tray I was most excited about – feeding a lion! I took a lacing card from 3dinosaurs.com’s zoo tot-pack, printed it on cardstock, cut it and the mouth out, and taped it to a plastic cup. A little bowl of popcorn, and a spoon, and she was able to feed the lion! She enjoyed this, and I had lots of fun watching her!

Finally, we did do some more work with matching cards, and three-part cards from the zoo packs. Munchkin wasn’t really too interested in these, so we didn’t spend long on them. She enjoyed looking at the three-part cards, because they were new, but wasn’t really interested in learning how to use them this time.

Thursday

I pulled all the trays out again on Thursday morning – they were requested early, before I was ready! We had some new dot marker pages to work on, a new sticker scene, and a new lacing activity. Munchkin was so eager to get on with the stickers that I almost didn’t get my setup photo in!

Next, we worked on some lacing cards from a busy bag swap. Munchkin was very open to letting me prompt her with threading the string up or down each hole, and then pulling the string tight herself. This is the first successful attempt at lacing we’ve had, so it was a big accomplishment for us. We laced the bear twice, and got started on one other animal before moving on. Feeding the lion was a big hit again today, as were matching and the dot marker sheets. Munchkin was very intent on making sure that each little bit of text got completely covered in dot marker!

Great art wall this week!