Bring the animal world to life for your child by helping him/her match two separate parts to make a whole animal. Then encourage creative thinking and expressive language skills to make some creative crazy creatures!
- Target Age: 3-7
- Language and Literacy Skills
- Physical and Motor Skills
- Cognitive Thinking Skills
- large animal pictures
- poster board
Directions: Help your child have fun with yourself or a friend in matching parts to make a whole. Cut out enlarged colorful pictures of different kinds of animals. Glue pictures on poster board then cut each image in half. Talk about animal names, characteristics, and habitats. Match halves to make a whole. For more fun, reverse thinking by mismatching pieces and renaming them to create new crazy creatures. Imagine a giraffe-a-gator (giraffe/alligator) or ele-pottamus (elephant/hippopotamus)!
Talk about It: Ask your child to share what he/she likes best about helping someone else accomplish a goal. Then share ideas about what a zookeeper does to help the animals at the zoo stay healthy, clean, and safe.
Take it Further: Use these ideas to explore more about the animal world and how others help animals:
- Visit the zoo and ask to meet/visit with the zookeeper or animal specialists.
- Start a library of animal books and video tapes.
- Search the Internet (always with supervision) to visit "animal" Web sites.
- Find animal game reserves or petting farms that you can visit for an up-close animal experience.
- Talk to your local vet to learn more about how he helps animals every day.
With a Group: Have an "animalistic" tug-o-war with your group. Divide children into small animal groups like reptiles, amphibians, and mammals or jungle animals, desert animals, and sea animals. How about animals with fangs, wings, or tails? Paint old t-shirts or make head or arm bands that name each group. Draw lines for an imaginary snake pit or crocodile-infested river for the groups to play tug-o-war over. The winning group gets the prize (of your choice) for helping each other the most, while the underdogs get band-aids for braving the imaginary snake pit or crocodile-infested river!
- Clifford Helps Out (Clifford the Big Red Dog Series) by Apple Jordan, Carolyn Bracken (Illustrator)
- If I Ran the Zoo by Dr Seuss, Dr. Seuss (Illustrator) (Random House, Incorporated)