Pets Prop Box

This week, we began our study on pets. With the help of one of our parent volunteers, we used this nicely decorated cardboard box as a prop box to introduce the topic of pets.

We put several different items in the box including a dog leash and collar, a food/water bowl, and a dog toy. Also I added photos of different pets.

I also checked out a box of puppets from our resource room to use with the kids. They seem to really be interested in the puppets.

More pet activities to come!

Storytime Sunday: Veterinarians

Here are the books we read last week. If you want to see previous posts on our veterinarian study, click here for set up or here for photos of the kids carrying out the activities.

This book is short and simple and goes over basic responsibilities of being a veterinarian.

This book show different tools the veterinarian uses and explains what they are used for. Very informative.

This book talks about just what the title say, A Day in the Life... from arriving at work to leaving for the day and why this person wanted to be a vet.

Sesame Street. All our kids know about Ernie! This book is great because it tells about different aspects of being a vet including going to farms to care for sick animals. The kids really enjoyed it even though it was a little long.

I'm linking up to:

Animals from Recycled Materials and More!

Here is what we did to set up our vet and continue our pets/animals study. 

First we made signs and hung them up.

 Then we pretended to be vets and fix up the animals.

 In the sensory table, we added cotton balls, bandaids made from felt, tweezers, and tongue depressors to take care of sick animals as well.

 We painted a box as a dog house.

 But, in the end, we decided we needed it more than the dog...

To extend the pet store that we have been working on the past several weeks, we put price tags on the animals that were for sale and used the cash register and play money to buy them.

And, for our last project, we painted and decorated recycled materials to make animal sculptures.

TIGER

TURTLE

LADYBUG

BIRD

SNAKES

I love this one, the little boy was determined to get the legs to stay on, but school glue just wasn't cutting it, so I got out the hot glue gun :)

Prep for Vet Study

Here are some of the things I got ready for this week's study on vets.

First, I made my own pretend bandages using felt and velcro.

 Next, I made an Open/Closed sign for the kids to color and decorate and hang in the vet's office and the actual office sign below. Or if they are so inclined, to make a sign by themselves.

 Next is an Animal Scavenger Hunt. They will take this out with them at outdoor time and circle any animal they see. Each child will also take an extra sheet home to do as homework with their families. They are also encouraged to count and write how many animals they found and where they found each animal.

Here are some tags I got ready for the children to write prices on and attach them to some of the items for sale at the pet store (We still have pet store set up in block area)

 For our sensory table, I added things a vet might use, including cotton balls, tweezers, tongue depressors, and the homemade bandages.

Our word wall words for the week.

 Our morning message for the week.

I'm pretty sure the kids are ready for this lesson as they have been "fixing up" injured and sick animals for a while now!

Storytime Sunday: Pets 2

The first book we "read" this week is a classic from The Berenstain Bears. I say "read" in quotation marks because this book has a LOT of words, so we pretty much turned the pages and told the story instead of reading all the words.

Next, we read The Wildlife ABC.

I love this book for all the great illustrations as well as the rhyming and the fact that each page says something about a different animal without using too many words, so it's great for younger children.

But if the children request to learn more about one of the animals, there is a little bit about each one in the back "Nature Notes" section.

And lastly, we "read" A Ball for Daisy which has no words, so basically we did the same type of telling the story in our own words.

We did a felt board story as well about the day in the life of a dog vs. a day in the life of a squirrel. It compares wild animal and tame animal daily routines so that children will get an idea of how each meets it's needs. Here is the felt board pieces and the stories below it.

This is a page from the book Growing up Wild: Exploring Nature with Young Children by the Council for Environmental Education

We sponge painted sea animals on blue paper that represented water. Children were encouraged to draw in the surroundings that might be found in their animal's environment and describe their drawings.

Happy Reading!