We learned about Animals this week, and we have a wonderful book Animalium that nicely facilitated a lot of our discussions. Mostly we discovered that there are some different classifications of animals. Reptiles is one of them, for instance. We also learned that some have bones, others don't. Some have live births, others lay eggs. And a fun way to put all this information to good use is animal dress up, of course! I've been working on building the girls' dress up bin this last year (Tip: check out all the holiday clearance bins for things like clip-on bunny tails, headbands with ears, etc). One special purchase I made was this adorable Opposite of Far felt mask (This is not a sponsored post, we just really love these masks). We also found fun eagle wings and a bug hat at IKEA. To enrich the girls' pretend play, I asked questions like, "What would your home/habitat be like." "What do <fill in the blank animal> eat for lunch, do you think?" One afternoon, they imagined our basement was a ground hog hole and I wasn't allowed down there. Because I'm a mom, not a ground hog. Haha!
Another fun game we played is the Animal Emotions Dice game from Feelings theme week. There's a free printable on that post so you can make your own dice set. Mia is three and Millie is one and kids these ages struggle with the whole emotions thing so anytime we can make a fun game out of it, we do. We kept the emotions simple for Millie but I also introduced some more complex ones for Mia like proud peacock, stubborn mule, etc.
We made a trip to the Denver Zoo on one of our nicer weather days, but our more fun outing was out to a nature preserve. I've been showing Mia field guides and explaining how they are used. Ours even shows pictures of scat so you can learn what animals are in the area when you come across poop. And seriously, what kid doesn't want to talk about poop?! We indulged it a bit this week for the sake of learning. We only found one pile of scat and one type of tracks. After looking it all up, we were pretty sure we were in the same space a mule deer had been earlier. And then we actually ran across a mama mule deer and her baby. Confirmed!
For a fun art project, I picked up this unfinished wooden slithering snake at Hobby Lobby. The toy design actually does a good job illustrating a snake's bone structure and how they are able to slither. Beyond that, I used Mia's painting time to talk about snake safety. We just moved to an area where rattlesnake encounters are not that uncommon, but Mia only knows the "cute" (her word, definitely not mine) little garter snake Stevie we used to see by the creek at our old place. And when she did see him, her first instinct was to try and catch him. Not good. I try really hard not to pass my fears onto her or even to fill her with fear at all, but instead empower her with information. We talked about how we need to back away when we see a snake. We even talked about places snakes are likely to hang out. And when we were at the zoo earlier in the week, we spent some time at the rattlesnake exhibit so that she could see what they look like, too.
A summary of all Animal week activities with links:
ACTIVITIES: Played animal dress-up and practiced animal sounds, Also played the animal emotions dice game (free printable in the Feelings week post), Learned how to use field guides and looked for signs of animals on our nature walk
ART PROJECTS: Made paper plate animal masks, Painted a wooden snake
OUTINGS: Went to the Denver Zoo and did an animal scavenger hunt
BOOKS: Animalium by Jenny Broom, Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi, For Just One Day by Laura Leuck, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle, Sleep Like a Tiger by Mary Logue
BIBLE STORY: Noah's Ark
If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).
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