Virtual Book Camp

Hannah and I have been participating in the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp and we are having a great time with it.  This is the third and final week of the camp and it's "Zoo Week!"  (Week 1 was "Things That Go" and Week 2 was "Classic Tales" - I'll post more about them later).

Since she's still at school two days a week this summer and we're busy with other things, we've been spacing out the activities so we'll have fun things to do for at least a few more weeks to come.

On Monday afternoon, we worked on a "book" of Australian animals - Grandma and Grandpa had cut out a bunch of fun pictures of animals for Hannah before their trip to Australia a few months ago, so she glued them to scrapbook paper and eventually she'll have her own book she can look through.

Yesterday we went to the zoo with our friends Olly and West (and their mom, Sarah).  Although it was a really hot day, we had a good time.  We tried to do two activities while we were there (find an animals that for each color of the rainbow and find animals for every letter of the alphabet, but it was too chaotic and we didn't finish the activities - something to look forward to for a future visit to the zoo!).

Looking at the bears

He's eating an orange!

Sleepy jaguar

Zoo train

Playing on the "spider web" at the zoo playground

Hannah and Olly made it to the top!

He held her hand because she was nervous on the wobbly bridge :)

Yesterday afternoon we did more zoo stuff.  We made our own paper plate zoo, using the animal images from here.  I had cut them out in advance, and punched holes in a few paper plates.

Hannah glued the animals in place and then together we wove some yarn through the plate to make bars for their cage.  She LOVED "sewing" the yarn!  It was her idea to attach the two plates together, and she wanted me to write "Open Today" on the sign.

 

Feeding the animals

Afterwards, she decided that the whole thing should be a sign for a real zoo, and she wanted to bring down all of her stuffed animals to make them into a zoo.  We set up all of her animals in groups - bears, flamingoes, frogs, etc. - as if they would really be at the zoo.  There was even a dinosaur at her zoo.  She then did imaginary play with it for a very long time - she was the zookeeper and she fed the animals.  She even had me turn off the lights at one point so the animals could go to sleep.

We also read Zoo, Dear Zoo, and A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Lots more zoo fun to come - can't wait to share it with you!

PS - Last night at bedtime, she told Dan she couldn't go to school today because it's "zoo week!"  He explained that they are just activities that she and I are doing together and they aren't for a specific time.  She felt much better after that - I'm glad she's having so much fun with all of this - I know I am.