Z is for Zeal and Zoo

Z is for Zebra at the Zoo!

Bible story: Jesus Clears the Temple

Books: Zoo (by Gail Gibbons), A Day at the Zoo (by Sarah Harrison), Z is for Zookeeper (by Marie & Roland Smith)

Craft: zebra-Z marble painting

Snack: animal crackers

Science: animal facts

Blessing others: zucchini bars for Zeke's daddy (a friend who 1) had a birthday this week and 2) has a son named Zeke)

So while our character trait-alphabet curriculum started out great for my boys (attitude and bravery, etc.), I'm quickly finding out that it's not all preschool-friendly. Zeal? Really? And the activities to go along with it were way out of our league. So, we just talked about being excited for doing things God's way and left it at that. We can always come back to it in a few years. (Oh -- I just looked it up, and it's designed for ages 4-10. Well, that explains some things.)

We started out the week with some spontaneous imaginative play. (By "spontaneous," I mean that I had no inkling of this activity until we needed some new distraction Monday morning and I happened to spot the blocks and the ark animals at the same time.) We built a zoo!

Making another cage.

Levi insisted that I take another picture to show that Gordon and Percy were functioning as the zoo train. You can also see our children's zoo (the cow in the fence) and the monkey cage.

Marble painting was very fun; the boys were enthralled. I printed big Zs on white paper and put the paper inside a gift box half, then squirted some black paint into a bowl for coating the marbles. Tips: we had to re-coat the marbles 2-3 times per letter, and I had to help tip the box to keep the marbles rolling on the paper. We used two marbles at a time, which seemed to work well. 

Drying on the counter.

After the letters were dry, I cut them out. They look even neater as just the letter, without the rest of the paper!

Naturally, a week about the zoo required a trip to the zoo. We were fortunate to get to meet up with two friends there, making a grand total of seven kids (including three two-year-olds and two one-year-olds) between the three mommies. Silas has made great leaps in awareness in the last month, which became very obvious as he made all the animal sounds and got excited about his favorites (the giraffes in particular). Fun!

It's not often I have the oldest kid of the bunch.

Not at all zoo-related: posing with the giant Big Boy and pumpkin display.

I brought along a clipboard with three papers: a page of animal pictures for Owen to color as we saw them, and two charts (hand-written on notebook paper) for Levi. He kept track of whether the animals had feathers, fur, or skin, and whether they ate plants or meat. Later, he used the second chart to glue pictures on a bigger chart (courtesy of 2 Teaching Mommies). Most of the time, Levi read the pertinent information off of the signs at every exhibit, but twice he was brave enough to ask a nearby zookeeper! Communication skills, woohoo!

Plant-eating animals on the left, meat-eating on the right. In the foreground, Owen trying to grab the chart we took to the zoo. 

Owen did two worksheets from the 2 Teaching Mommies pack this week: tracing straight lines (from zookeeper to animal) and counting zoo animals/gluing on the appropriate number. His pre-writing skills still leave much to be desired, but he does love to use the glue stick!  As such, we also went back to our apple number book and glued on five apples.

Four . . . five!

The boys helped me make the zucchini bars and colored the gift tag for Zeke's daddy. We're trying hard to get Levi to look a person in the eye and say something other than a brusque "here" when handing a gift to them. It's a work in progress. :)

Five letters in, it's been so fun to watch Owen become aware of the written world around him. He's been able to spell his name for a while, but now he's pointing out letters all over the place -- "Hey! That's our letter!" or "we did that letter!"