Animals Around the World!

The Plan

Books

From Head to Toe by Eric Carle
Hooray for Hat! by Brian Won
It’s a Tiger! by David LaRochelle
My Heart Is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall
Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Jane Cabrera

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “One Elephant Went Out to Play”

Flannelboard: “Seals on the Bus”

Action Rhyme: “Little Monkeys Swinging In the Tree”
Little monkeys swinging in the tree
All hold hands and swing with me
Swing up high and swing down low
Swing in the tree, now don’t let go!
Swing, swing like I do
Swing like the monkeys in the zoo
Credit: Step By Step — Rainforest Theme

Song & Puppets: “You Can Hear” (Tune: She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain)
You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo, ROAR! ROAR!
You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo, ROAR! ROAR!
You can hear the lions roaring, you can hear the lions roaring
You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo! ROAR! ROAR!
(Elephants trumpeting, zebra braying, monkey eeking)
Credit: Perpetual Preschool

How It Went

Site Information
At this location, I visit four classrooms total, reading to five classrooms total. The first classroom is a combined two-year-olds classroom. Then I visit two three-year-old classrooms and finally a four-year-old & five-year old classroom. I’m at the facility for about two hours, and my voice is definitely feeling it by the end of the visit!

Topic
This particular facility selects themes for me to do ahead of time to tie into their curriculum.

Two-Year-Olds (Combined classes)
This group was definitely most involved in “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” — I think it more than helped that I encouraged all the toddlers to rock slowly with me. There’s a definite benefit to asking toddlers to do a kinetic motion along with their listening. You get a lot better results! The kids loved the finger puppets that I brought for the song “You Can Hear” and I had nearly every animal that they called out!

Three-Year-Olds (First classroom)
My most enthusiastic participants during “Hooray for Hat!”. “Hooray for Hat” was a wonderful treasure that I ordered and a co-worker pulled off the new books shelf to read aloud to all of us in the department one day. It had fast become the book that we read to each other on particularly difficult days. I was so pleased that the kids seemed to love it as much (if not more) than we librarians do.

Three-Year-Olds (Second classroom)
These kids asked once I finished “It’s a Tiger!” if I could read it again. One of their teachers copied down the book’s information and promised them that she’d buy a classroom copy. Now if that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is! They also really enjoyed “From Head to Toe” and following along with the movements in the book. (I still paper-clip the donkey page!)

Four-Year-Olds & Five-Year-Olds (Single classroom)
Another set of kids that really loved “Hooray for Hat!” and “It’s a Tiger!”. This group really appreciated the interactive reads this summer and I will definitely keep that in mind if I’m asked to return next summer. They were also really happy to see the “Seals on the Bus” flannelboard again; they had last seen it at the beginning on June and this was the middle of August at this point. More than enough time to repeat a favorite!