Story Time with V & Me - Dear Zoo

This little book needs no introduction!

It is commonly aimed at younger children, but with these fun extension activities, the age range can be extended.

Let's dive right in:

1) Movement and Sounds

A great way to get your children to move is to ask them to move like the animals in the book - so stomp like the elephant, stretch like the giraffe, slither like the snake, etc. You could get your children to name other animals and move like them too. Another fun extension is to get them to make the animal sounds. Be prepared for a lot of noise, as children love to stomp around making animal sounds as loudly as possible!

2) Language Extension

Whilst they are moving around and making animal sounds, you can do some language extension like naming the animal sounds, eg trumpet for the elephant, bark for the dog, etc.

Another great language extension is to choose an animal and name all its body parts, eg trunk, tusk, head, hind legs, forelegs, head, body and tail. Remember to point to the body parts for the younger children so that they can make the connection between the word and the actual body part. As they get older, you can ask them to point to the relevant body parts that you name for them.

To really extend your children, add in some adjectives (descriptive words) too, eg long trunk, big ears, thick hind legs, grey body, etc.

3) Fun Facts

Why not learn as many fun facts as possible about one of the animals in the book? If your child shows an interest, keep on learning about the other animals too. There are many websites that will simplify information and break it down into bite-sized chunks, designed specifically for younger children.

4) Understanding

This little book is great for testing your child's understanding. Ask them questions, beyond what the book says about why the animals were not suitable to keep. So not only is the snake too scary, he could also be poisonous, what do you feed him, where do you keep him, etc. Don't only focus on the animals that were not suitable but ask why the dog is suitable.

5) Animal Families

Another great extension of this book is to use it to teach the children about animal families. So, for example, the male elephant is called a bull, the female elephant is a cow and the baby elephant is a calf. You might well learn a few new facts yourself!

6) Sorting

Most households have got a pack of plastic animals floating around somewhere, and these will be very useful now. You will need a larger tub and a few smaller containers/bowls/baskets, plus all the animals you can find. Put all the animals in the larger tub and lay the smaller tubs around it. Place one animal of each type in each of the smaller containers, then let your children sort the rest of the animals into the smaller containers.

To make this more difficult, get your children to sort by different things, ie herbivore, carnivore or ominvore, or by continent they live on, size, or habitat, etc. This is for the older children, and they will need to have a fair amount of knowledge already, as we never want to give them an activity that sets them up for failure.

7) Counting Activities

The most obvious activity here is to simply get the children to count all the animals in the book. Next they could count all their plastic animals.

The next level is to get them to count all the elephants, then all the giraffes, etc. If they have a good understanding of numbers, get them to tell you which group has the most animals and which the least. If comparing all the animals is too much for them, let them start with comparing only 2 groups, then 3 groups, etc until they are comparing all the groups.

A further extension is to ask them to give you a specific number of any animal, eg 3 animals or 7 animals. To make this activity even harder, ask them to give you a specific number of a specific type of animal, eg 3 frogs or 7 dogs. You add layers of difficulty as they master the previous layer. This is called scaffold learning.

8) Mathematics

Following on from point 7 above, you can use this time to introduce your older child to basic mathematics. You should always start with addition. It does not need to be complicated, and should just be done in a casual, fun way. You could ask your child to find you 2 elephants and then to give you 1 more elephant. Ask how many elephants you now have and let them count them. Once they have understood this, you can introduce the symbols and vocabulary too.

9) Animal Jumble

Again, this is for the older children.

Get the children to mix up the animal names and create their own make believe animals. Let me explain this a little more. If I take the elephant and the giraffe and I put their names together, I could make an eleraffe or a girant. Then you ask the children to describe their make believe animal. They could even draw it. They can be as fanciful and strange as the children want. The idea is to let their immagination run wild and be a little silly. Just have fun with it.

All this from one little book!

And you don't need any fancy equipment!

So, let your child listen to the story above, and then get stuck in - and don't forget to have fun!

Enjoy :)