Zoo Days

Zoo Day at the Daycare (What fun!)

Animal Planet ER
Create an ER in one of your rooms. drape a white sheet over a table, get a bright light for the table. Make masks for the kids to wear or ask your local Doctor if you can buy or have a few. If at all possible let them watch Animal Planet and see how theie ER works. Some supplies you may want to provide include:
Cotton swabs, cloth bandages(made from scraps) bandaids, rubber gloves, play stethoscope, scale, clipboards, tablet, pencils, something to use for animals who require an over night stay, dog dish, water dish, stuffed animals brought from home who are ill ;-), play telephone, play thermometer.

Zoo Animal sponge painting
Find some animal shaped sponges and create your own zoo using the sponges. After the kids stamp out their picture, get some string and dip the string into the paint and let them drag the strings from top to bottom to look like a cage.

Zoo Animal Matching Game
Cut duplicate sets of pictures of animals out of magazines or coloring books, down load them from the net. Pin one picture on each child's back. All the children should move around the room behaving like the picture of the animal on their back. The object is for the children to locate their matching animal.

Sorting Animal Crackers
Animal crackers can provide excellent sorting and matching experiences for children. Dump out a large pile of the crackers (Sam's club had large bags for a great price) onto the table. Let kids sort them by species, size, whre they live etc. When your done get out the milk and enjoy eating your sorted piles! :-)

Monkey's in the tree
Give each child a piece of construction paper with the outline of a tree drawn on it. Set out ink pads and felt tip markers. Let the children make thumbprint monkeys all over their tree pictures. To create each monkey, Have them press a thumb on an ink pad and make two thumbprints, one above the other, on their papers. Then let them complete their monkeys by adding faces, arms, legs, and tails with the markers or crayons.

Penguin Fingerpuppets
Use film canisters and cut the lid in half. Hot glue them to the sides for wings. Finish up by adding a white foam belly and an orange beak and two googly eyes (get self stick ones from a craft store or Walmart).

Penguin facts
 ...do not fly, they hop, walk, or toboggan
 ...expert divers and swimmers
 ...thick layer of fat called blubber under skin
 ...they do not build nests. The female lays egg, males hold egg on the
 top of their feet, hunches down so skin covers and warms the egg.
 ...raise their chicks in colonies called rookeries
 ...there may be thousands of penguins in one rookery

Penguin cut outs
 Cut out penguin shapes from black paper. Paint with Epsom Salts deluded in water. Makes the penguin look frosty.

What keeps a Walrus warm? Blubber !
Blubber=The thick layer of fat between the skin and the muscle layers of walrus' and other marine mammals, from which an oil is obtained. Try this Sceince experiment!
Take two small plastic bags-turn one of them inside out and place it inside the other bag. Spoon shortening in between the two bags and seal them together. This makes a blubber mitten and the kids caninsert their hands into the mitten and put their hand into icy water and see the difference that the blubber makes in keeping warm.

100 Animals
 I went to the zoo
 And what did I see?
 100 animals
 Looking at me.
 There were,
 10 tall giraffes, eating from the trees.
 10 silly monkeys, scratching on their knees.
 10 sleeping snakes, lying in the sun.
 10 munching elephants, eating peanuts one by one.
 10 leaping tigers, performing in the shows,
 10 pink flamingos, standing on their toes.
 10 grouchy bears, trying to get some sleep.

I'm a little Seal (Tune: I'm a Little Teapot)

 I'm a little seal
 On the ice.
 I think cold is very nice.
 I can slide around first once, then twice,
 I think ice is very nice.

Seals
 Have you ever seen seals in picture books?
 I always smile when I see their looks.
 They look like mermaids in their fancy suits,
 all black and shiney from head to boots.
 I often wonder when it snows,
 Do they freeze their little seal toes?
 Do they shiver and shake in their land of ice?
 Sitting on icebergs can't be nice!

Monkey's Swing Thing
Have the children stand in a circle and hold hands. Recite the following poem, have them swing their arms up and down.

 Little monkeys swinging in the tree,
 All hold hands and swing with me.

 Swing up high and swing down low,
 Swing in the tree, now don't let go!

 Swing, swing, like I do.
 Swing like monkeys in the zoo.