Tot School-Animals

This past week we focused on animals.  Mara loves animals and for the most part is really good with identification and the sounds they make.  I wanted to focus on some animals we don't talk about too often and also some other aspects of animals besides the sounds they make.

Tuesday we made up for lost time (I don't know what happened on Monday) and did four activities.  We started with an insect do a dot work sheet.  Mara calls any insect "bzzzzzz" so it was fun to introduce her to more specific ones. We did a bee worksheet and a lady bug.  While we were doing the lady bug worksheet we made sure to sing our ladybug song from music class back at Fort Bragg.

The night before I made Mara some binoculars out of toilet paper tubes so we went on an animal hunt around our house.  She loved this simple toy and kept them around her neck for most of the day.  We then decided to make our own animal mask.  Again the night before I prepped a paper plate and some torn up construction paper.  All Mara had to do was stick the paper in the glue.  I find I need to keep crafts fairly simple to keep her engaged and interested.  Even so sometimes she just isn't into it.  This was the case with creating the mask but as soon as it was dry she was all about it!

After nap time I got out the play dough and created a play dough petting zoo invitation to play.  I used Popsicle sticks to create pens and placed some of her little people animals in the pens.  Mara loves play dough and was content to have fun with this for two hours!!  That's an eternity in toddler time! She pulled out the sticks and then used them to make designs in the dough.  She also made animal tracks through the play dough!

Wednesday started with some animal matching.  For this activity I used wild animals that she wasn't as familiar with and printed out clip art pictures of them.  All she had to do was place the animal on it's picture.  She knocked this out really quickly and we did it again.

 The play dough made it's appearance again this day.  I had originally planned on doing animal track art with paint but switched it to the play dough because she really wanted to play with it.  With a toddler it's all about being flexible and hey it actually was less clean up for me!

Post nap we rounded up the day with some sticker art.  This is the first time I've tried this kind of activity with her and I'm so glad I did.  She loved it!  I took a piece of construction paper and made a very simple farm scene.  I then took some farm stickers we had and attached them to a spatula (she can't really peel them from the paper yet so this was to help).  She then created her own scene by adding the stickers to my drawing.

Quickly she wanted more and more stickers.  We made up for this by sorting the rest of the animals by type: cows, pigs, sheep, horses, etc.

Thursday was all about paint for us.  We read a book about pigs and then used a sponge and paint to make him dirty.   She really liked this and would point to a part of her body before making that part of the pig dirty.

We then painted our hands to create zoo animals.  We did a giraffe, zebra and elephant.  I saw this one on pinterest and thought it was so cute.  Turns out it is only as cute as the mom's ability to draw in the details of the animals after they're dry.  I'm not an artist so you can only imagine!

Friday was a rushed day as we only really had the morning at home before running errands and trick or treating.  I opted for another sticker art project.  This time we did an under the sea scene with some left over fish stickers I had laying around.

Animals were a hit and I am excited for next week....FOOD!