More Zoo!

It was a short week this week (teacher work day on President's Day) and I didn't seem to take many pictures..... not sure why. We are still working on our Zoo study. Since we are only working on Zoo animals during science (three times a week for half an hour, the other two days we do social studies) we will be continuing this theme for a few more weeks until we actually head to the zoo on March 9th.

Here are the three animals we have learned about so far (monkeys are from last week):

On Friday we compared Zebra's and Giraffes (our two animals of the week):

And then did this adorable thumbprint experiment from Deanna showing how every person has their own unique line pattern on their thumb, just like zebras and giraffes have their own unique stripe/spot pattern.

We made these cute Flamingo books from Kim Adsit's Animal Blasters pack. Each page highlighted a different way that animals move and the kids sorted pictures onto each page that provided examples of that movement. Fish = swim.

She has other really cute books in the unit that address body coverings and habitats, so we'll be doing those in the coming weeks too.

Also this week we read :My Heart Is Like a Zoo" and then we talked about our feelings and how love can feel like many different things. The book is also great for continuing our adjective discussions as each animal is described. Angry/Bear, Silly/Seal, Cozy/Clam, Happy/Hippo, etc. I had the kids think about how their own hearts felt on that particular day and then we wrote them all down.

Once they knew how they felt and what they were going to write I had them put it down on writing paper and then we used construction paper hearts to make our pictures, just like the pictures in the book.

click to see it bigger!

For management purposes I did this in small groups. We looked at the picture of each child's animal and I cut out the hearts they would need in the various colors/sizes. Then they glued them down to make their animal. A lot of work, but they turned out so cute! Here they all are hanging on our writing wall:

We also read Elmer this week since our letter was Ee and he's a zoo animal as well, and the kids made their own Elmers, but of course I forgot a picture!

Next week we'll be continuing our Zoo unit during science, continuing our Black History studies during Social Studies, and jumping into all things Seuss in Reading! Over 80 people have bough my Seuss unit and told me they love it! If you still need some ideas, check it out!

Some ideas I plan to do next week.....

After reading the Lorax:

After Reading One Fish, Two Fish:

After Reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck:

After Reading Green Eggs & Ham:

End of the week Treat:

Books from this week: