Tot School: E is for Elephant

 ~Moose is currently 28.5 months old~

 Letter of the Week: Ee

Object/Theme of the Week: Elephant/Zoo

Book of the Week: Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

Moose has been a fan of the zoo since his first trip to Zoo Atlanta last August.  He is also an enormous fan of lift-the-flap books.  So although this book is a bit light on text, it is a favorite, and it was easy to convince Moose to read it daily.  He is familiar with most of the animals (elephant, giraffe, monkey, frog, puppy), but reading this book during the week was a good opportunity to talk about the lesser-known ones (camel, snake).  I also brought out Eric Carle's 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo (he actually counted some of the animals at one sitting) and One Night in the Zoo by Judith Kerr(which is such a beautiful book, but which he hasn't been captivated by the way I have). 

This week I enlisted Moose's help to gather the items for our sensory bin.  We went on a scavenger hunt to collect some natural items to go with our zoo animals.

Finding natural items was the easy part.  Keeping them in the pail was the hard part!

The bin used some of the animals from the Fisher-Price Little People Noah's Ark , along with some colored rice I made, and some textured balls from Oriental Trading.

Once again the bin was a hit!

Moose enjoyed exploring how the rice felt in his hands.

And used the measuring spoon I put in the bin to feed the animals (wish I'd gotten a picture of that!) as well as practice scooping and pouring.

Then Moose decided that he needed to see how the rice felt on his feet and climbed into the bin.



He insisted on taking a photograph of his feet propped up on the side of the bin.

I should not have been surprised that the exploration ended in dumping the bin.  It gave us the opportunity to practice sweeping.

I guess he was in the cleaning spirit, because he insisted on helping clean the sink in our powder room.  Thank goodness I made the switch to gentle, non-toxic cleaners when he was born!

I also put out Moose's Melissa & Doug Safari Puzzle this week.  He tells me he is putting each animal "in bed" when he puts them in their correct slot.

We ended the week with a Friday afternoon trip to Zoo Atlanta.  Moose was excited to watch one of the zookeepers feeding the flamingos.

He identified the elephant and giraffes without any prompting this time!

He also got to see his favorite animal - the panda - eating dinner!

(I just wish I'd found this great zoo scavenger hunt before our zoo trip!)

It was a great week!  I loved watching him "care" for his animals: "feeding" them in the bin, and putting them in "bed" in the puzzle.  I think the emphasis on the zoo this week made our culminating zoo trip even more memorable than usual (he brought it up at dinner Monday, telling Daddy Moose what animals he saw at the zoo - again).

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