THE ZOO
"I went to the Zoo & what did I see...?"
This unit was broken down into 2 main parts:
1. Learning our continents.
2. Learning and sorting the animals from each continent.
Most zoos are set up to display animals from the same continent. Each day we explored 1 continent's iconic animals: Africa, North America, South America, Australia, Europe, Asia, & Antarctica.
What we know about the Zoo Video CLICK HERE
Feeding Animals in Math
Taking care of zoo animals in the Home Center
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Counting our game piece around the lion's mane
Zig Zag Zebra Letter Game
AFRICA: We view my Africa
Zoo power point and discussed African animals such as lions, elephants, giraffes,
& zebras. We play a math game,Lion Mane's, and a literacy game, Beginning Animals Sounds Game.
North America number bingo
Fox Game- finding words that start with "F" like our fox!
North America- We viewed my north American Zoo power point and learned about animals from our continent: bald eagles, deer, brown, black, & polar bears, American alligators, raccoons, & opossums. Then we played a North American animals BINGO game.
Numbered monkeys in numerical order
Sloth race winners! -the slowest sloth WON!
South America-
We watched a BrianPopJr video about the rainforest: why they are important & what people are doing to them. We learned that South America has one of the Earth's largest rain forests- with 1/2 the worlds plants and animal species live. And we held a SLOTH RACE (click)
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Australia- We viewed my Australia Zoo power point and talked about kangaroos, kola bears, dingos, & "salties"salt water crocodiles.We identified lettered bean bags for the kangaroos pouch! We also played d-i-n-g-o spelling in literacy!
Letter Bean Bag pouch toss!
d-i-n-g-o spelling
Asia-
In this lesson we learned about komodo dragons,
cobras, the 4 types of Asian bears, and Asian rhinos, & Asian elephants-who are smaller & have
smaller ears than African elephants.
We "fed" an elephant
and we made Styrofoam peanut sculptures in art.
We fed numbered magnet to our Asian elephant, and played an elephant measuring game for long/short
Styrofoam Peanut Art Sculptures
Europe- We viewed our powerpoint about animals from Europe: reindeer, wolves, dormouse, and hedgehogs. Then we played a Put-the-Spikes in the hedgehog counting game after reading Hedgehugs- a story about hedgehogs that want to hug each other but they are too spikey!
Make a body & head. Roll dice & insert correct number of spikes
Zoo Animals, beginning sounds
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Feed the Penguin Math Game
Antarctica- We talked about how nothing really lives or grows there. Animals come to rest, have babies, and escape danger: penguins and seals- and people come for a little bit to work (like scientists).
Seals swimming to numbers in the ocean
Amazing AABB pattern!
Sorting and Patterning Animals
Using math skills through play!
These girls used the zoo blocks to sort each zoo animal to the correct zoo block!
how many blocks tall are your giraffes?
Learning about height & weight!
We used unifex blocks to measure how tall our giraffes were, and explored with balanced scales to learn how to determine the difference between heavy and light!
Weighing monkeys and bananas in our Heavy Monkey Game
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Zoo felt in Math
Zoo Around the Room!
Building Panda Bear's bamboo forests in Science
Animal puzzles in Math
Building zoos for our zoo animals in Blocks
Number/Shape turtles and alphabet alligators in the Sensory Table
balancing monkeys in Science
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