Welcome to Week #6 – At the Zoo!
Download and print the activity calendar for Week #6 from the pink button below. Hanging the calendar outline on the refrigerator or in a plastic page protector makes it easy to know what’s on the schedule each day!
Day 1
Animal Writing: Find small plastic toy animals that can be easily cleaned with soap and water (or in the dishwasher). Squirt washable paint on to a paper plate and spread it around. Using large paper would be fun for this activity – maybe a cut and flattened paper grocery bag or the back of wrapping paper or posterboard. Dip and wiggle the plastic toy animal’s feet in the paint. Make animal tracks on the paper with the painted feet to form letters, names, or simple words. Consider pre-writing the letters on the paper for younger preschoolers to trace while making animal tracks!
Don’t Wake the Snake: Print the snake page or cut a snake out of paper. Gather a bunch of rolled sock pairs of different sizes. Find enough pairs of socks to cover an area larger than the snake page. Fill the area with socks, even piling a few pairs of socks on top of the lowest layer. Add the snake page to the top of the pile of socks. Have your preschooler carefully pull one pretend snake egg from below the snake. Be careful not to wake the snake while taking socks! Each pair of socks is one snake egg. Add each pretend snake egg to a pile. Keep taking snake eggs out from below the snake until the snake falls to the floor and wakes up! Count the total number of eggs. Play again trying to sneak more eggs out each time OR play together trying to be the one to have the most snake eggs at the end when the snake falls and wakes up.
Elephant Truck Swing: A super fun way to create an elephant trunk is by cutting the leg off of a pair of tights or pantyhose, stuffing it with crinkled up paper, and wearing it as a “hat” around your head! Feel free to also just use your arms hanging low like a pretend trunk. Set up paper or plastic SOLO cups in a path along the floor. Act like an elephant and swing your trunk dramatically back and forth while knocking the cups over. To add more of a challenge to this activity, write letters or numbers on the cups, and call out the letter/number to be found and knocked over!
Day 2
Animal Magnets: Print the animal pages or create your own. Cut the page apart to separate the animal names, making it less confusing. Draw the animal in the box next to the name. Using letter magnets, build each animal name by matching the magnet to the animal page. If building the entire animal name is too much, cut the paper after the first letter getting rid of the remainder of the letters in its name. This will allow letter matching and initial sound practice instead!
Build the Cage: On a piece of paper, draw a zoo animal in the middle. Gather popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, or even play dough to use as the animal’s cage. On small pieces of paper, write one number on each piece. Make a pile of the numbers. Choose a number and add that many pretend bars of the cage (popsicle sticks) to add to the paper with the zoo animal. Count a number as each popsicle stick is set down across the paper all the way up to the number that was picked. Choose another number and play again. You can also use multiple pieces of paper to draw animals on to make your own little zoo!
Flamingo Walk: Create a path on the floor with tape or draw a path with chalk outside. Flamingos stand with one leg tucked up, balancing on the other leg. Practice this flamingo stand a few times and then walk like a flamingo down the path. Start on one foot with the other foot way up in the air and pause for a second. Take a step and switch legs and pause. Keep going all the way down the path without falling over!
Day 3
Paper Plate Lion: Paint a paper plate yellow. When the paint is dry, add facial features to the middle of the plate. To create a lion’s mane, have your preschooler use scissors to snip into the plate straight in. Do this all around the entire plate for added detail and to help build fine motor skills. To help with the snipping, consider holding the plate and turning it while your preschooler cuts.
Feed the Bears: Print the bear page or draw your own version. Each bear needs to be fed. Use goldfish crackers, berries, or small beads to feed the bears with. Consider adding small tongs or kid-friendly squeezers to add food to each bear. Count each goldfish cracker as it is added to the bear. But be careful! You do not want to overfeed the bear. Make sure all of the food can fit inside the circle. After counting the total snacks for each bear, practice writing the numbers or number words too!
Zoo Hide & Seek: Gather all of the stuffed animal toys you can find. Count the total so that you know how many you begin this activity with. Hide them all over the house. Hide some in easy places and some in tricky places. Grab a laundry basket or some kind of bin or bucket and have your preschooler walk through the zoo, collecting the animals as they are found. To add a fun scavenger hunt type twist to this activity, take a group photo of all the stuffed animals and print it out on paper. Add it to a clipboard. Mark off each animal as it is found. Count the animals in the laundry basket when you are done to make sure you have them all!
Day 4
Giraffe Cover Up: Print the giraffe pages or create your own. Cut the spots out and add uppercase or lowercase letters, words, or names to them. Hang them around the room. Add the same letters or words to the spots on the giraffe page. Each time a spot it found, identify the letter/word on it. Bring it back to the giraffe page, find the match, and use a pom pom or play dough to cover it. For an added challenge, cut the spots in half creating puzzles. Build the puzzle correctly and find the matching letter on the giraffe to cover it!
Collect the Bananas: Cut a bunch of paper bananas out of yellow paper. Place them all over the house or room. The goal of the activity is to move like a monkey all over the room, while collecting as many bananas as possible. Use a timer to give your preschooler a goal to work from. Count the bananas gathered. Spread them back out and see if even more bananas can be collected within the time limit. Another way to play would be to give your preschooler a certain number of bananas to collect OR to give a simple addition sentence to solve with a certain number of bananas.
Alligator Chomp: Depending on the weather, bring a plastic pool or bin outside to fill with water. If you cannot go outside, use the bath tub! Add different floating and non floating toys to the water. With alligator chomping arms, eat as many pieces of pretend food in the water as you can by pinching them in between your hands and getting them out of the water. Make sure to use alligator chomps and not just grab the toys from the water!
Day 5
Paint the Animals: Find a few animal toys in the house OR print a few from the internet. Display the animals to easily be seen. If you have any books about the animals, consider reading one or two before the painting begins to learn more about the animal (fiction or nonfiction books work for this activity!). Set up an easel if you have one or a paper on the table. Using watercolors or tempera paint, paint your own version of the animals displayed. The animals can be can be painted on one paper all together or on separate papers. After the paint is dry, display the painting with the animals!
Tiger Tracks: Print the tiger paw prints and cut them out. Set them up on the floor or outside in a path. Giving number and multi-step directions, have your preschooler travel down the paw prints. Some examples of directions could include: Go to the 3rd paw print. / Go forward 3 and back 2 paw prints. / Hop over one paw print and tip toe on 3 more paw prints. / Walk down 5 paw prints and then walk down 3 more. While giving directions, try to be clear without needing to repeat the direction and numbers over and over again. Switch places and have your preschooler give you the directions!
Free the Animals: This activity will take a little prep time, so get it ready the night before. In a shallow glass casserole dish, line up small plastic animals along the bottom. Add water to the dish to cover the animals. Don’t cover them the entire way, but add water to cover them at least half way. Place the dish in the freezer overnight. To play, add water to a cup or jar and use a medicine syringe or dropper to drip water on the ice. Each time the water is dripped on the ice, the ice will melt. The more the ice melts, the easier it will be to free the animals. Keep dripping the water until all of the animals are free!
The activities for Week #6 are ZOO-tastic!
Hopefully you are loving the Preschool on the Go activities and that you are feeling more confident about setting up learning fun for your preschooler. Don’t forget, if you are ever looking for more in-depth printable options, you can check out these products:
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Grab the printable outline for Week #6 from the pink button!
Hang it on your refrigerator so you can glance up at it to see what is planned each day. Keep the digital copy available to quickly click to access this page at any point for details about the activities.
You can access all of the Preschool on the Go activities from the main page!
Email me at nicole@modernpreschool.com if you need to!