Preschool was all about animals this week! We talked lots about endangered animals, poaching, and protecting animals. With Earth Day coming up next week, I wanted to talk a bit about who we share the planet with. Touching the deer hide and looking at the footprints of several small animals was a highlight.
I brought out lots of animals masks and we played poacher/animal hide-and-seek. We also made the distinction about hunting vs. poaching, and which animals there are plenty of - so it' okay to use them for meat to eat. I thought it might be a sensitive topic, so I was prepared, but they were all very logical about it all.
They got specifically interested in talking and learning more about Bengal tigers. Did you know they can get as long as 10 or MORE feet long (head to bum)? Wow! It took 2 and 1/2 kids to make that length when we mapped it out on the floor. They colored stripes on a paper and then I cut out the tiger shape for some puppet-like play together.
We pretended our apple snacks were really meat that we hunted together as a tiger family and we ate outside.
Of course, not everything was about animals, and there was lots of play time too. They are such BUSY kids!
Our fine motor activity was writing the first letters to their names with the tiny pegs of the Lite Brite. It was a lot trickier than they all thought initially and took each preschooler a few minutes to complete.
The preschoolers worked on teams to complete several math worksheets, after they ASKED for more math work. They are seriously ahead of the game.
