Mommy & Me Camp Week 4: Let's Go to the Zoo

What's cooler than feeding a giraffe?

It's a total *-zoo here, and I'm cool with that! Our Mommy & Me Camp theme this week is zoo animals. Our city zoo in Richmond, VA is absolutely amazing and we are hoping, weather permitting and preparations for Shabbos permitting, to be able to take S this Friday afternoon. But just in case that 60% chance of rain delays our trip from this week to another one, there is plenty of zoo themed fun happening here at home. Here's a peek at some of our activities this week as promised in this post. (In case you can count and noticed the absence of Week 3's theme, it was all about Father's Day and I am terrible at keeping surprises. We spent last week reading and singing about Tatties, Fathers and Dads, Oh MY! We also worked on a card booklet for my husband using several great ideas from Pinterest.)

There are a lot of wonderful classic and newer children's books out there about zoos and animals. S has a few favorites at home, like Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann and Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino. His favorite book of all time is Going On a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. He also has really enjoyed hearing The Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort using a popsicle stick puppet set I made to go along with the story this past year when I was teaching.

We checked a lot of great books out of the library as well. One of our favorites is Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? and we are working on some different types of fingerpainting using a variety of colors and materials and textures to create a laminated set of animals to go with the story. S also really likes using a laminated set of pictures from the library with the book If You're Happy and You Know It: Jungle Edition by James Warhola. I learned a lot about the history of zoos in A Zippy History of Zoos: What's New? The Zoo! by Kathleen Krull. Who knew zoos have been around for thousands of years?!

We have had a lot of fun playing with toy animals inside and outside, too for that matter!

With temperatures in the upper 90s this week, the kiddie pool has been a popular attraction!

Today we have some bigger kids coming to visit for a few hours. S loves bigger kids! And it will be a great opportunity to test out an adaptation of this idea I found on Pinterest: 

Yup, it's a zoo here and we're loving it! Now we're off to the playground before the temperatures hit triple digits...