Zoo activities

“Mummy’s taking us to the zoo today …” I heard this refrain sung over and over and over again yesterday. The singing wore me out, but the trip to the zoo itself was great fun. Before we went, there was a lot of preparation.

- Tom wrote a list of must-see animals.
- Annalise imitated Tom and ‘scribbled’ her list, and then read it to me.
- Tom, Annalise and Joe played with the zoo duplo, building homes for the animals.
- We made butterfly cakes for morning tea to take to the zoo.

At the zoo, we saw our favourites – the elephants, tigers, butterflies, meerkats, seals and many more. Tom was quite good with following the map, (unlike his geographically dyslexic mother!) and drew his own version when we came home.

After we came home, all of us exhausted, we flopped on the couch with a pile of zoo books. This one is a great zoo book for toddlers. I’ll post about other zoo books later in the week for preschoolers.

Rod Campbell’s “Dear Zoo” is a lift-the-flap book, with lots of white background and bright, strong colours. The repetition is fun for toddlers and the different types of flaps to open make it interesting. The adjectives to describe each animal will extend vocabulary. We’ve been lucky enough to receive a couple of “Dear Zoo” books – and we have needed them as they have been well loved here! Joe at fifteen months is at just the right age to really enjoy opening the flaps and learning the animal sounds, so this is a perfect book for him.