Zoo Themed Lesson Plans for Teachers and Parents of Two's and Three's

Today our play date was at the Houston Zoo. This week in preparation for this exciting adventure I planned our lessons around the Zoo Animals Theme. These plans are one of my favorites, as well as some of the children and parents that I have taught over the years. They are fun, colorful, easy to do, inexpensive and so very exciting to children; especially if the field trip this week includes real animals. If your budget or time doesn't allow for a field trip, that's ok too, there are some other ideas in these plans that are just as much fun.

For Circle Time (as referred to in many preschools) but we call it quiet learning one day this week we had a pajama day, my daughters and I got up, had breakfast and kept our pj's on when we started our lessons. On another day we had foam cut out pictures of the moon and stars and foam sheets to peel and stick the several different pictures of the moon (different phases) and start.

Toy Time

The Fisher Price camera takes imaginary pictures of animals, but also shows in the view finder lifelike pictures of animals. There is a pop up flash, push button to take pictures and a sliding back and forth camera cover. It also hangs off a small wrist band so your little adventurer can pretend to take pictures every where this week.

The Fisher Price A-Z Learning Zoo is great for the toddler age group. You can reinforce color recognition, use your imagination for playtime, letter and phonic recognition is introduced when you push a button and the zoo set up includes many of the items that we saw today, such as; a waterfall, tree swing, zoo vehicles, and animal food and water barrel.

Imagination Time

Build a zoo with blocks, pull out the animals you have in the house (plastic, soft, plush) and get down on the floor and play zoo time with your child. Acting out the animals actions of eating, walking, and animals sounds will be fun for both of you.

Pretend to be different animals. Stretch way up high like a giraffe's neck, roar like a lion, swing your arms like a gorilla, and make silly animal sounds. Your children will giggle so much with mom or dad acting so silly.

Get different swatches of fabric from the fabric store and talk about the different ways they feel and how each animal may feel.

Art Time

Create your own Zebra: You can use black paper cut out in the shape of a horse and let your child use white chalk to "draw" stripes; you can use white paper and encourage your child to decorate it with black tissue paper, you can place the cut outs on popsicle sticks (with your older toddler) and use it for a puppet. This project reinforces color skills and opposites.

Lions Head Puppet: Paint a paper plate yellow. Work with your child gluing shapes to form the nose and eyes (triangle for the nose, circles for the squares). Glue yellow yarn around the edge. You can also make this a puppet by placing it on a Popsicle stick and have a zoo puppet show. This project reinforces color skills and fine motor skills. This project is recommended for older toddlers.

Paint with feathers. At the dollar store, pick up a feather duster. Trim the feathers from the duster and give it to the children to dip in paint and then paint with. You can reinforce color recognition by talking to them while painting about the colors of the feathers, talk about how only birds have them and people don't, show what neat designs it makes and discuss the texture of the feathers.

Music Time

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn Around

Fine Motor Play

Pull out the Play dough, roll it flat and stamp it with zoo shaped stamps.

Gross Motor

Place a piece of tape on the floor or outside. Your child can "practice" walking the balance beam, holding their arms out to the side for balance.

Play a game of Monkey See Monkey Do. You or your child can act out a motion and the other repeats it. My daughters think it's hilarious when I swing my arm like it is a trunk and make an elephant sound. Wave arms up and down and pretend to fly.

Snacks

Be a monkey for snack time today. We also learned today that bats love bananas and other fresh fruit and eat the center out of the banana without touching the skin; they sort of peel it like we do.

For this snack take a peeled banana and dip it in yogurt, roll it in granola and let it sit in the fridge for a little while on wax paper. Then it monkey see monkey do time, eat them together.

Take a field trip

Houston Zoo in the fall is wonderful. The weather is perfect, the kids are happy, and school age children are back in school. It is not as crowded as it is during the summer when visitors are in the area or during Spring or other school Breaks. Your lesson plans come to life as you walk through the zoo talking about each of the animals. Discuss with your little ones what the animals are doing. Talk about how they may feel and my daughter loves it when I pretend to be one of the animals. The two year old loves the growl of the Lion and the monkey sounds that I make. The younger one giggles at the roars, but also likes the tweet tweets and whistles of birds.

If you can't get to a local zoo, try area parks. Here in Houston we also have several parks with wild animal exhibits and aviaries, for example Bear Creek Park and

If you don't have any zoos or parks with animals nearby, try going to the library and getting the BIG books with pictures in them of zoo animals. Or you can try to find magazines with pictures of animals in them. Or you can create a zoo at home, pull out all those stuffed animals that are "zoo" related and create own zoo. Pretend to feed and water the animals.

Story time

This week the favorite stories by far were the "Touch and Feel" Books by Nicola Deschamps. We own the Jungle Animal and Wild Animal versions, but she has several available. In this wonderfully designed board books, different identifying characteristics of the animals peek through the board page. The lion's mane is furry; the tree frog has sticky feet, and so on. Each animal is realistically depicted and special characteristics named and exhibited. These books are wonderful. Children can feel and learn about different textures, different easily understood facts about the animals and the board books hold up well and are easily cleaned. I can't say enough good things about them.

Costs of these plans: Depends. The Houston Zoo is $5.00 each, no parking, and I packed lunches. Children under 2 are free. However, we have a membership, so my total for the zoo trip was gas and $2.00 for the carousel. The books are $7.99 each or check your local library. Crafts-use whatever you have at home or school, most will have the chalk, construction paper, Popsicle sticks and the bananas were .38/lb. My total this week was $5.00 as I picked up some more play dough and yogurt.

My daughter's (and I) were so tired at the end of the day. But it was one of the best days we have had. Each part of the activities for this week means a great deal of interaction with your child, but it is definitely worth while when they give you a big hug afterwards and say, "Tank you mommy, more zoo, more zoo." I think your child will enjoy them too.

If you like this article and would like more information you may want to read, Lesson Plans for teaching your Toddler Color Recognition.