Pets in the preschool classroom

Posted on July 1, 2015 by The SEEDS Network

Caring for a small pet, such as a fish or reptile, can provide young children with the opportunity to learn more about animals firsthand. As preschool teachers, we know that young children are engaged and learn best by DOING. We can certainly teach about animals through books and pictures … but how much MORE will they learn when they can actually interact with one. They can learn about caring for animals and the responsibility that goes with it. For preschool programs, having a classroom pet provides a wonderful opportunity for learning about nature, science and living things.

At our preschool (and at my home), we have Betta fish, which have a low start-up cost and are very easy to take care of. At the beginning of the school year, we have the class name the fish – and that really helps to give the children ownership of the pet. One of the most favorite classroom jobs a child can have for the day is the “Fish Helper” – where it is their day to feed the fish. The Betta fish food are really tiny pellets, so it’s also a good fine motor skill for the children to pick up the pellets and put them into the tank.

Photo credit: Dennis Brunelle Photography

I think children can learn a lot from seeing and interacting with living things. At various times during the year, we will also bring in special visitors who bring in some other animals that the children can learn about. During our summer camp, we even had some older children come in and share their pets with the preschoolers. This gave the children an opportunity to observe, touch and feel an animal they may not have seen before, or only seen in pictures.

Grants to bring pets into the classroom

Updates on a few grant programs to help teachers who want to bring in a pet into their classroom.

PetSmart is now offering a “Pets in the Classroom” grant for Pre-K through 6th grade teachers to cover all the expenses of a classroom pet. Teachers will also receive additional assistance with a PetSmart associate who can help them with the basics of pet care.

Teachers can visit www.petsmart.com/teachers to apply for the grant and learn about ways to incorporate a classroom pet into their curriculum. This section of the website also provides teachers with some lesson plan ideas, some of which can be adapted to fit into a preschool curriculum.

Petco also offers a

The Pet Care Trust helps to promote public understanding regarding the value of and right to enjoy companion animals, to enhance knowledge about companion animals through research and education, and to promote professionalism among members of the companion animal community.

Pets in the Classroom grants are offered to Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth grade classes only in both public and private schools. These grants are intended to support pets or aquariums in the classroom for the purposes of teaching children to bond with and care for their pets responsibly.

Petco is also a partner with The Pet Care Trust, which supplies products and funding for classroom critters at low cost to schools, with no out of pocket supply cost.

Do you have a pet in your classroom? Other than fish and reptiles, what other types of pets would be good in a preschool classroom?

P is for Penguin in preschool

Posted on January 10, 2013 by The SEEDS Network

During the colder winter months, a popular topic in preschool is winter weather … featuring snow and ice! And how about those animals that live in icy climates? Arctic animals can be fun to learn about, and who doesn’t love a cute penguin? We had a teacher make an adorable penguin door display at our school …. so I searched around for some fun penguin activities to go along with it! P is for Penguin in preschool

Penguin Door Display

Use the shape of a door frame as the canvas to make a LARGE penguin!

Toilet Paper Tube Penguins

Show children pictures of penguins, talk about the environment where they live, the penguin life cycle, etc. Then you can have children cut out shapes, glue and assemble a penguin out of a toilet paper tube.

Shape Penguins

Have children explore various shapes that can be used to make a penguin (ovals, circles, triangles). Older preschoolers can practice cutting these shapes themselves (teacher/parent can pre-trace the shapes for children to cut out, if needed). Then they can assemble shapes onto a black penguin body.

More Penguins on Pinterest

There are so many other great ideas from bloggers that we found and pinned on Pinterest related to penguins and other arctic animals. Check it out to see penguins made out of footprints and waterbottles .. and polar bears made from cotton balls and styrofoam cups!

Counting and literacy activity with Pete the Cat

Posted on December 3, 2012 by The SEEDS Network

The “Pete the Cat” series of books are loved by children, teachers and parents! (We are pretty big FANS ourselves!)

While doing a recent “Book & Boogie” activity with the story “Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons” at our local library, I wanted to have something for the children to take home with them so they could retell the story. The activity below provides a hands-on counting component to the story while you read it – but can also be used to retell the story afterwards.

Beforehand, print out shirt clipart (or do a freehand drawing) onto some yellow cardstock or construction paper to look similar to Pete’s shirt in the story and then cut it out. Provide one to each child.

WHILE YOU READ:
Before you read, have children put 4 circle/dot stickers on their OWN shirt (you can put 4 dots on each circle with a marker to make it look more like a button, if you wish). I also put 4 sticker buttons on my shirt as well. As you read the story and Pete looses a button, have the children take one of their sticker buttons off their shirt and put it onto their yellow paper shirt. Have them count how many buttons they have left on their own shirt – to go along with how many buttons Pete has left on his shirt.

Continue until all the buttons are off their shirts and onto their paper shirt. They can then bring their paper shirt home to be able to re-tell the story. Or they can use their paper shirt in the art center, draw a picture of Pete and glue the coat on.

AFTER YOU READ:
You can laminate some yellow paper shirt and put them in the reading center along with the book and stickers. Children can put 4 buttons on the shirt, and as they look at the book, they can remove a button from the shirt just like in the story. Laminating the cardstock shirt with clear contact paper or a laminating machine will help with durability, and for ease of the stickers to be peeled off and on.

Don’t forget that there are FREE song downloads available for each “Pete the Cat” story – and after you listen and read, you’ll definitely be walking around and singing “My buttons … my buttons! My four groovy buttons“!

Make a hibernation book in preschool

Posted on January 10, 2012 by The SEEDS Network

During the winter months, you can teach young children about hibernation and where/how/which animals hibernate. This activity focuses on concepts of science (nature, animals) and literacy(knowledge of books and print, reading and writing, story comprehension). This also provides children with an experience to practice fine motor skills(drawing/writing).

A great way to start of an activity like this is with a book! There are many great children’s books about hibernation, such as “Don’t Wake the Bear” by Marjorie Dennis Murray, “Hibernation Station” or “Bear Snores On“. You can start by reading one of those books with your child/children – and then make your own book about hibernation. Not only will they learn something about the animals and how they hibernate – but this early literacy activity can provide an experience for children in making their own book.

Start off by determining which animals you want to discuss or that the children want to learn about. In our class, we talked about bears, frogs and chipmunks. You can start by printing some of the page templates we created – or you can print/write your own.

Next, find some animal clipart to print or cut from a magazine. Our book focused more onWHERE the animal was hibernating, so the children drew/illustrated the location, rather than the animal itself. Depending on what you want to focus on, you can change that accordingly.

Children/teachers would read each page, then the child would illustrate the hibernation location and then glue on the animal. For additional writing practice, children can then trace/write the WORD that represents the hibernation location (ie. “cave”, “pond”, “ground”).

Our last page was more open-ended, and allowed the child to think about where he/she would hibernate if they were an animal! Children can draw/dictate/write what they feel. You can have children glue on a picture of themselves to finish off the book!

Milking a cow in preschool

Posted on October 17, 2011 by The SEEDS Network

We have been “down on the farm” at preschool these past few weeks, and one of the favorite activities for the children was getting to milk a cow! Ok, not a real cow – but a really cool wooden cow! This was a great way to teach the children about cows and where milk comes from. Children learn best by doing … and they could experience what it is like to milk a cow, much like a farmer would. We were lucky enough to have one of our teachers, Miss Brittany, make this great looking cow!

We filled the red bucket with milk, and the children could gently squeeze the rubber “utters”. They got so excited to see the milk come out!

This same experiment can be done on a smaller scale – using a rubber glove and milk. First, make pin holes in the fingers of a rubber or latex glove (be aware of any latex allergies). Fill the glove with milk and tie the opening of the glove closed. Hold the glove and allow each child to take a turn to make milk come out of the glove into a bucket. You can extend the activity by having the children estimate how many “squeezes” it would take to fill up a glass of milk.

During our Farm week – we also had some farm animals come and visit our school. The highlight was the children had a chance to milk a REAL goat! This was a great hands-on experience – and the children learned of another animal that also produces milk!

Do you have any fun farm ideas? Share them with us here!

Animal craft book activity (guest post)

Posted on July 26, 2011 by The SEEDS Network

As promised, today we have a guest post from Maggie Woodley of the Red Ted Art blog! Red Ted Art is a wonderful blog for all things crafty, and features kids crafts (suitable 18mths – 10yrs) and weekly tutorials (suitable for older children and adults). She has one son – known as “Red Ted”, and a little girl – “Pip Squeak”. 🙂 I’m excited that Maggy is sharing one of her ideas that ties in perfectly with our recent Animal Week post.

Loo Roll Animal Zoo

This craft is inspired by the book Who’s Hiding by Satoru Onishi.

Maggy says:

I bought this book ages ago for Red Ted, who was less interested in it. Maybe it is an age thing, I don’t know? Pip Squeak (coming up to 20 mths) adores it and has for quite some time. The book is simple: each double spread page has 24 animals depicted (see book cover below). They are drawn in a simple colourful style. As you turn the pages, the background changes in colour – e.g. blue, so that in that case the bunny and pig “disappear” as their body colour blends into the background colour (see cover, they are blue) and the child is asked “who is hiding?”… To mix it up a little, there is also a “Who is sleeping?” and a “Who is crying?” page etc. And the page that mine like best: ”Who is backward?” For some reason, in our house this translates into “Who is showing us their bottom?”… and Pip Squeak loves tapping her bottom and saying “Po-Po” (in German). Very sweet, simple book with appeal to “design geeks”.

The Craft
It dawned on me one day (as we were reading the book AGAIN), that some of the animals were perfect “loo/toilet paper roll shapes”. Trim a bit at top and bottom for ears and legs and hey presto….

Materials: Loo/toilet paper rolls, paint, bits of felt, glue , black marker pen for features and googly eyes (optional)

The googly eyes are optional – on some of the animals I cut out paper eyes and I have to say, I prefer these, as they look more like the original book.. but you know how much children love the googly eyes! The kids painted the rolls the colors of the animals in the book.

Once dried, I cut out some ears and some feet. Red Ted helped me stick on googly eyes and other features. E.g. for the lion’s mane, we cut a circular piece of felt with squiggly edges and cut a whole in the center … For the elephant and rabbit we had painted an extra blue loo roll to cut ears from. For the rabbit’s ears, we glued on the elephant’s ear’s we “slotted” into “slats” we cut. And for example the cat’s ears are part of the original roll – I just cut the roll “down” – leaving two triangles.

Caution: you may be roped into making 24 animals – which quite some task… I reigned it in after 8, that was quite enough!!!!

Thanks Maggy at Red Ted Art for sharing this wonderful idea! It’s a great way to recycle materials into something creative that the children can actually play with afterwards. I also love how the craft ties into the book. This is a great book activity, and during our Book Study of “Literacy Beginnings” (Fountas & Pinnell), the authors talk about how children respond to literature by participating in an activity after reading it. I can see many games of “Who’s Hiding” being played with these!!

You can see Maggy’s entire post and more pictures at www.redtedart.com/2011/07/06/kids-crafts-loo-roll-animal-zoo

Animal week at preschool

Posted on July 22, 2011 by The SEEDS Network

We are in the middle of summer camp, and last week was all about animals. We broke out each day to focus on certain kinds of animals – we had Zoo Animals, On the Farm, Pet Day, Pond Life and Jungle Adventure. Here are a few of the activities that we had for each of these days:

Zoo Animals

• BOOKS: “Wild about Books” and “The Giraffe who cock-a-doodle-doo’d”
• SNACKS: Animal crackers
• GAME: Animals cracker charades
• CRAFT: Marbled zebras (see picture above)

On the Farm

• BOOKS: “Funny Farm” and “Cows can’t fly”
• SNACK: Chicken feed (mix of sunflower seeds, dried fruit and cereal)
• GAME: Pretend to milk a cow – use latex gloves will small holes in it, filled with milk and have them squeeze them over a bucket (be sure there are no latex allergies in your group first
• CRAFT: Mixed up Animals

Pet Day

• BOOKS: “Good boy Fergus” and “Wanted, The Perfect Pet”
• SNACK: Fish bowl snack (glass bowl of blue jello with swedish fish)
• GAMES: Doggy, doggy where’s your bone and Pet Hospital
• CRAFT: Dog bone prints (get various size dog bone treats and have children dip them in paint and stamp with them on paper)

Pond Life

• BOOK: “In the small, small pond”
• SNACK: Frog Food
• GAMES: Five Speckled Frogs , Froggy, Froggy catch the fly and Where’s the egg game

Jungle Adventure

• BOOKS: “Jumbled Jungle” or “Click Clack Crocodile’s Back”
• SNACK: Banana treats (cut bananas in half, put them on popsicle stick, spread honey on them and roll them in sprinkles or shredded coconut and freeze)
• GAME: Animal relay races (have children race pretending to be elephants, bears, tigers, etc) and Alligator’s Go!
• ART: Have a teacher do animal face painting

More on animal crafts next week when we have a guest post from popular blogger, Maggy Woodley from Red Ted Art!

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Category Archives: Animals