Some of my favorite zoo preschool activities include the adventure of going to the zoo. Here is where we take imagination and creativity to make a zoo on the playground. This adds a dramatic play component to the theme and the children will be equally excited when they step foot on the playground to see all of the animals. Some other items that you can add are goggles, a safari hat, a canteen, a camera, or drawing materials Your students can pretend to be zoo keepers or safari tour guides.
Let’s get your lesson plan ready for your zoo theme. Get the paper and pen and take some notes or read and think about how you can take these ideas to make your theme better than last year. The safari ride is about to load for the tour and I’ll be your tour guide.
Zoo theme for preschool
There are many activities that I love for the zoo theme for preschool. Some of the activities include mother and baby puzzles, Zoo pattern cards, zoo animal movement activities, and the feed the zoo animal. The benefit of using themes to teach basic skills is the fun factor. If we as teachers ask a child what shape they see; they might answer. Ask a child what shape the zoo animal is about to eat is fun, engaging, and you can also teach colors.
The difference is the children will want to feed the animal’s shapes all day long. The teacher that used flashcards to teach shapes will have a class that may or may not get bored. When children are bored that’s when we need to be on guard. Our job as the tour guide for the theme is to keep the excitement and fun at a high level to avoid boredom and behavior.
The puzzles and pattern cards help to teach the children about relationships, problem-solving skills, and decision-making. Students will learn new skills such as matching, creating a pattern, and sorting skills. The goal of a great teacher is to make learning fun so that your students do not realize that they are learning.
Zoo Animal Activities
The next stop on the safari for our zoo theme includes toddler-friendly ideas. The zoo animal activities that your class can participate in include a file folder game, the design a safari scene, look who’s going to the zoo, and a zoo animal movement activity. These activities are interactive and help teach skills. The file folder activity can help teach the various animals seen at a zoo. This also builds on sorting and matching skills. The design a safari scene helps foster creativity and decision-making skills. Your students will want to create many scenes. I also use this activity in pairs to build teamwork, turn-taking, and communication skills.
The look who’s going to the zoo allows the children to put a zoo animal in a cage to bring to the zoo. This activity can help foster language development when asking questions about the animals that they pick and why. The animal movement activity will help teach the children movements that various animals can make while working on coordination skills.
Zoo animals for preschoolers
These zoo animals for preschoolers can also be used with toddlers as well with some modifications. There are some zoo animal graphs where the children can pick their favorite zoo animal or use the icons and pick an icon to graph the results. This is one of my favorite activities to document children’s responses. Toddlers will need adult guidance, whereas, preschoolers can complete the activity independently. The finished graphs can be used to count the totals for each animal. The word wall cards can be used as class decor for a toddler class to learn that objects have names that have symbols. In preschool, the children can use word wall cards to practice writing the various zoo-related items.
Zoo theme
Teaching a zoo theme is much more than just focusing on the animals. Children can learn about the different habitats of animals while learning about the zoo and the animals that might be in one. Some animals live on land, others on water, and some live on the ground. Children also can learn that animals can be awake day or night. Teaching children what kind of food each animal likes to eat can introduce the food chain to children. We can also use the zoo theme to talk about safety. We have fences at the zoo to keep us safe because we do not know what the animals are thinking. These animals do not live with us because they are wild animals that live outside. The zoo preschool activities theme is a great theme to teach various science concepts.
Our zoo theme tour is coming to an end. As you can see the zoo preschool activities unit is a great summer theme for everyone. Who doesn’t like going to a zoo and seeing if you can find tigers, lions, zebras, and elephants? I love ending the summer with the zoo theme in my class, this is like the final farewell to summer and going out with a bang.
If I have intrigued you into making your next unit of study a zoo theme I can help in your planning for your safari trip. If not and the thought is overwhelming, I can also help. All of these amazing activities can be yours to make your next zoo theme come alive in your classroom. Click the image below to check out the Zoo activities for preschool packet to jumpstart your tour guide planning.
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