Preschool: Letter Z, Zoo, & Noah's Ark

We continue to go through God's Little Explorer's preschool curriculum and are loving it! I planned one week of activities, but it spanned 3 weeks. Sickness and Summer business are to blame :) I'm sure all these activities could be done in a week or two though!

Letter: Zz

Theme: Zoo

Biblical Story: Noah's Ark

Bible Story- Noah's Ark:

I read the story of Noah's ark to them most mornings and reviewed our Bible verse. I like to accompany our Bible story times with an activity or craft to further understanding. The crafts for these weeks were done over the span of multiple days.

The first day I cut out shapes for Littlemiss to paste on paper to make a boat. Then I gave her mini Popsicle sticks to glue onto it to make her own ark. 

She can glue use the glue independently these days. Often her projects end up with globs of glue on them, but she enjoys the creative independence!

While Littlemiss built her ark, BooBoo was putting Popsicle sticks in and out of a plastic container. It kept him quite busy and he was exercising those fine motor skills!

The next day I gave her stickers of animals to add to her ark. She literally piled them on her ark.

We did rainbow a rainbow craft to finish her Noah's ark art. We talked about how the rainbow was God's promise to never flood the earth again, and how God always keeps his promises. I drew the lines on a piece of paper and gave her pieces of paper, feathers, and sequins to match the colors and paste them on the rainbow.

She carefully glued each piece on and concentrated the whole time. Love to see her "work" so hard.

Another week I used these story line printables from the Ministry-to-Children website. She chose to watercolor them one day, and then we played with them the other days. We practiced lining up the pictures in the order they happened in the story. I would ask questions like: What happened first? What happened next? Can you line them up in order and tell me the story of Noah?

She pasted them on a piece of paper (a piece of a paper grocery bag), and retold the story to BooBoo. Such a joy to see her teaching him. One of the many joys I'm sure I will enjoy with homeschooling.

With the GOBS of rainbow crafts on Pinterest, I couldn't resist another fun learning activity. The activity was presented to Littlemiss like this and I told her to string the beads on the pipe cleaner that matched. She sat and concentrated on this for a good while.

Then we stuck it in play dough.

Learning Center:

Letter Z set up. The little book on the left is a book of things that begin with the Letter Z from RRSP curriculum.

Matching the letter to the beginning sound of the animal name. She has gotten pretty good at this. She did it all independently. I got the animal nomenclature cards from Montessori MOMents. I simply folded the word for the animal down, so she couldn't see the beginning letter.

This is a really neat writing practice toy. It uses magnets as you write along it with the wand to make the letters. I like it because of the resistance it gives while writing the letters provides a good sensory experience for "feeling" how the letters are written. 

She pulled this off her learning center through the weeks to simply play with on her own a lot too. I'm even going to pack it as a car toy for a long road trip we will be taking in a few weeks!

Practicing writing the Letter Z. She gets frustrated sometimes and scribbles on the letters. I encouraged her to keep trying and finish it and she did it! This is from RRSP.

Marking the number that corresponds to the number of animals in each box. From Squidoo.

Cutting practice is improving. This took her a few days to complete because she became frustrated with it one day and we just finished the next. I also hold the paper while she cuts to help her. Confessions of a Homeschooler.

When we do her Learning Center together I am often drinking tea, so Littlemiss has been asking to drink tea as well :) 

Building the Letter Z with our Cuisinart rods. On the Z at the bottom of the page we took turns placing rods on it. If she is frustrated or her attention is fading I find that taking turns with Mommy helps keep her engaged and helps her complete an activity.

Spelling the word zebra. From Confessions of a Homeschooler PreK Letter Z.

Writing the letter Z for her mini book of things that begin with the letter Z. From RRSP curriculum. 

Matching the animals to the animal print. We don't have a cheetah, so we just talked about the print. We talked about how the prints were all different from one another. From Squidoo.

You may wonder what BooBoo does while I work with Littlemiss on her Learning Center. We have a long gate that separates the "school room" (which isn't much considering Littlemiss is only 3.5 years) with her Learning Center. I often give him a toy that he can play with independently. This is a toy that can occupy him for a few minutes. It has pegs that can be pushed or hammered into holes. Both kids like to play with this and it definitely works his fine motor skills as he tries to fit the peg into the hole.

Additional Toys:

These are the toy shelves in our family room/play room for the kids to play with. I rotate the toys each week or two and I try to base it on the theme we have going for the week. Since these weeks were Noah's ark and zoo, we had PLENTY of animal based toys to choose from. The basket on the chair to the right are books that have to do with our theme. Most of the toys are available through the Amazon wheel at the end of this post. I don't have pictures of most of these toys in action, because these are their free-play toys and I'm often cooking, cleaning, folding laundry, etc while they play with these toys.

From left to right: musical Noah's Ark, balancing Noah's Ark (when the boat is upright the animals can be placed on top of it and balanced), wooden Noah's Ark shape sorting toy. 

Lacing animals, and Lego Zoo. I added the wooden boxes to be pens for the animals in the zoo. 

M & D Sort and Snap, matching Mommy and baby animals, and M & D Alphabet Train puzzle.

This puzzle got put together numerous times. BooBoo even "helped" this specific time. 

She sang through the alphabet each time to figure out which letter came next. 

This was an especially good activity for BooBoo because he was exposed to more animal names and sounds. He's recently started repeating words we say and is learning new words each day. It's exciting!

Letter Z Craft:

Painting stripes like a zebra on her letter z. We used a play zebra to show how the stripes look on a zebra. 

I painted a few lines and let her take over. 

The letters we have done so far. They are displayed above her Learning Center.

Zoo/Animal Activity- Veterinarian Clinic: 

I set up the family room as her Vet Clinic while she napped one day. I had only lined up the animals pictured for this play activity, but she went on to "treat" every single stuffed animal and line them up.

I added some band-aids, gloves, and wraps to her doctors kit. 

Each animal was individually treated. She was so sweet as she reassured each one they were going to be ok as she cared for them. I asked her questions like: What happened to the turtle? How are you helping him?

Looking in bears ears. 

Giving bear a shot in the head. Eeeek!

She hugged each animal as she greeted them before she began helping them feel better. And each animal got a band-aid at the end of their visit with her.

 Sibling Moments:

The kids continue to play more and more together. Littlemiss is the typical Big Sister who wants to direct what BooBoo is playing with her, but he is quite content to play along. In the picture above she asked me to take a picture of them together. 

Reading books to him. Animated much?  

 He just sat while she read.

Thanks for swinging by! Click below to see what other people are doing or to share what you've been doing with your little ones: