From Jungle to Desert

The last theme in our year is called "From Jungle to Desert." Our pretend center was a zoo hospital with children pretended to be veterinarians. They had checklist for the animals, checked the health of the animals and took care of the sick animals. We did many different art during this theme and some of them closely related to the books that we read. First, we had to decorate our zoo area with leaves and vines so the children practiced their cutting skills and made lots of leaves then created flowers (they got help from their family members when they visit our school for Family Night with MacPhail Music). Our first art work that we hang in our classroom was making stuffed fish as we read our favorite "Pout Pout Fish." Children colored their favorite fish, then stuffed it with cotton. We had them hang on the wall like swimming fish. Then we made hand print Zebra, Giraffe, Lion & Tiger (children got confuse with which one is which so we decided to make art and talked to the children the difference between those animals, where they live, what they eat and their features). The book "Oh, No! has tiger in it so we had a lot of discussion about tiger vs lion. Then after we visit the zoo, we decided to make our own zoo with the children favorite animals. Apart from art, we made Ocean in a cup and gingerbread cowboy for our snack. The gingerbread cowboy escaped from the oven and we had to look all over the building, fortunately, one of the children found him hiding then we cut him up and eat him up. Yumm... In our sensory table, we froze some animals and the children have to free them by melting the ice with their hands. Warm water was available close by to warm up frozen little hands (this activity was inspired by the frozen dinosaur at the end of "Never Ever Shout in a Zoo" book). Check out their cute pictures below!

​The books we read this theme are...