Tuesday, May 18, 2010

We're Goin To The Zoo!

How About You?

For the past couple of weeks, we have introduced the theme of zoo animals. Animals are lots of fun--the kids can practice imitating different sounds by making animal noises (I *love* snakes because it helps to teach the "SSSSS" sound to kids who have trouble!) and they can move like animals (stomping like elephants or hopping like kangaroos are fun ways to transition the students from centers and activities).

Some of the vocabulary items are also great for articulation skills! (Articulation is basically how we form our speech sounds). Many of our students leave off whole syllables in words, so "elephant" becomes "ephant," "kangaroo" becomes "kagoo." The zoo theme is an awesome time to model these multisyllabic words and to have the kids practice!! Do this by emphasizing the missing syllable-- "e-LE-phant" "kan-GA-roo" or clapping out the different syllables. 

The room is all set up for the theme.

Our bulletin board is set up with vocabulary pictures

we are learning: monkey, elephant, giraffe, tiger, snake, bear, zebra, panda, lion, kangaroo, crocodile (or alligator), camel.

Our library is chock full of zoo books


Our kitchen table has a zoo animal table cloth.

We've also got some posters up around the room and lots and lots and lots of toy animals and puzzles for the students to play with.

During circle time in the first week of our zoo theme, we read one of the zoo books, "My Baby," in honor of Mother's Day :)
We also sang the song "Going to the Zoo" by Raffi, which is a fun song that talks about a couple of zoo animals, plus Mama took us to the zoo--another nod to Mother's Day!

The zoo theme brought lots of fun activities, including fun books and games, making zebras, lions and giraffes, and lots more!!

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