ZOO

We had so much fun doing our first unit of the year: Zoo!


We used A Sick Day for Amos McGee for most of our activities.  It would have gone along perfectly with our first Apologia unit (Zoology 3), but we still haven’t gotten our books in yet.  (ahem…)


Here’s a look at what the kids did:



We read the book every day, similar to FIAR style.  The girls didn’t mind at all reading it every day, but the boys were bored with it until I gave them the scavenger hunt (from the Book Pack).







The first day they worked on some mapping skills, and mapped out their own route for Amos’s bus ride to the Zoo.  I had included clip art for them to cut and paste onto their maps, but they surprised me and chose to draw their own landmarks.





Nate got a little carried away and drew the Empire State building. 






Elaina and I worked on some time telling skills, and she wrote out different times for Amos to wake up.












Then she counted syllables with the vocabulary cards.




She also used the vocabulary cards with these Read, Build, Write mats and our letter tiles.  The animals we used to re-tell the story and also for the Animal Sort activity.



We sorted animals from the story in a few different ways: number of legs, animal size, classification, where they live, etc. 



Then she wanted to make another map for Amos.  Sure…why not!



The next day, I set out the doctor kits for the kids to play with after we read the story.  They got to pretend to be Zoologists, and gave these stuffed animals check-ups.  They all loved this imaginary play!



Our cat “Duck” was a great sport and got many check-ups that day!



We talked a bunch about what a Zoo Keeper does, and watched this video.





Each of the kids made a poster with a zoo, a zookeeper, and then listed three roles of a zookeeper.  We used Curious George Feeds the Animals for inspiration for our posters.








These are Elaina’s “Ballerina Zoo Keepers”.  Because even Ballerina’s can feed elephants.  (Do you see the man with the yellow hat from Curious George?)






The third day we talked about what it means to be a friend, like the way Amos was a good friend to the animals.  Elaina made a cute little book about being a friend.







She is so annoyed with me taking pictures here…



She wrote out her Bible Verse.  Am I the only mom who loves the cute messy letters of an early writer?  Keeping this one for sure!

There were a few other things we did that I didn’t get pictures of including having tea like Amos drank, playing chess (the boys), and lots of racing against each other (just like in the story!)



On the fourth and fifth day, we got out the Zoo Pack from 2Teaching Mommies and went through those activities as well.













Her favorite was the graphing!




On the fifth day, after reading Put Me in the Zoo, we got out our magnetic counting chips and this printable for a little spot making fun (just like the book!)



We’d been reading Polar Bear Polar Bear a lot, especially with Olivia who memorized the story and is so adorable making all of the animal noises.  We got out our game,  Polar Bear ABC for some word building.






We used these story telling prompts from Making Learning fun.  Both of the girls loved these and fought over them all week.


The kids are still waiting for the promised field trip to the zoo.  Hopefully we can do that soon!  I’ve heard great things about the zoo here and we all can’t wait to go.





This book has easily become a new family favorite, and one I would highly recommend for any home library.  Do you want your own set of printables to go along with it? 

 

Click here for the book pack:

A Sick Day For Amos McGee. 

It’s free and so much fun!