We have been loving following along with my friend Alison’s summer reading program that she shared on her blog. Each week has a different theme- last week we celebrated the 4th of July, and this week has been zoo week! The reading program comes with a free printable where the kids can color in a star for each book they read from each theme. My kids have been so excited to color stars for the books we’ve read and they look forward to the themed activities each week.

I wanted to start this post off by sharing the zoo books we read this week. A few of them we checked out from our local library, but the rest of them we had on hand. Some of these are board books and great for younger toddlers, while some are better/more fun for preschool/kindergarten-aged kiddos.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links which means I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase through those links. All opinions are my own, and I only link to products that I truly recommend.

Board Book Recommendations:
- 1, 2 at the Zoo
- If I Were a Monkey
- 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo
- Dear Zoo
- Animal Patterns

Picture Book Recommendations:
- My Heart is Like a Zoo (also comes in a board book!)
- The Underpants Zoo
- Zany Zoo
- Zoo Day
- Who Has These Feet?
- Lions

This was such a simple sensory play set up but allowed for so much open-ended, imaginative play. Anytime a child is engaged in sensory play, they are likely developing language skills, social skills, creative thinking, and problem-solving, all the while exploring new materials, and their senses. You really can’t go wrong with a good, simple, sensory bin.

There are tons of different sensory bin fillers, and lots that you could even use for this bin in particular. I happened to have a stash of green dyed rice that I wanted to use as our base this time to look like grass. You could also use dried beans, uncooked corn kernels (un-popped popcorn), dry, uncooked pasta, or even kinetic sand.

Here’s how we dyed our rice green:
- 1 cup of uncooked rice
- 1 tsp vinegar
- A few drops of food coloring - The more food coloring you add, the more vibrant color you will get. You can always add more as you go so maybe start with less and see how it goes.

Place the rice, vinegar, and food coloring all in a large, sealed ziploc baggie, and shake/mix it all up until your rice is completely covered. Lay some parchment paper out onto a cookie sheet or cutting board and pour the colored rice on top to let dry for several hours.

Repeat these steps (or double the “recipe”) for however much rice you want/need, and switch up the color of food coloring each time if you want more than one color. In this case, I wanted one big batch of green, so I did this a couple of different times all with the color green. We also have a batch of rainbow rice where I did about a cup or two of rice for each of the different colors that I wanted. You can see how this rice turned out in this post.

After dumping our batch of green rice into a clear, plastic storage container (our favorite thing to use for sensory bins), I added our favorite set of mini animal figures which CAME WITH those little green fences AND the little tree in the corner of the bin! So perfect for this activity. I also put a couple little containers of dried beans out to serve as “animal food.” I chose the biggest dried beans we had on hand so that they would be easy to pick out/separate from the rice when it came time to clean this bin up.

Materials:
- paper plates
- orange paper
- yellow paper
- scissors
- kid-safe scissors (optional)
- glue stick OR
- liquid glue (we actually used both)

This was such a fun, easy little craft for both of my kiddos! For us, I prepped everything before hand. I folded the paper plates in half and cut a slit in the center of each plate, then cut a circle out of the center for their faces. I cut strips of orange and yellow paper for the kids to glue around the edges of their plates.

My friend Alison did this with her kids, too, and she had a great idea to turn it into a scissor skills activity. She had her preschool-aged kiddos cut their own strips of paper- so smart! You can see how theirs turned out here.

Even without having your kids cut their own strips, they are still working on fine motor skills by using the glue and placing the strips around their lion’s mane. As soon as my kids finished their manes, they immediately held them up and started roaring through them. Daddy was working outside and they insisted on going out (still in their jammies) to “scare him.” ;)

Another day, another sensory bin. ;) Remember how I mentioned dried beans as a potential zoo sensory bin filler? Here you go! These are dried pinto beans and lentils- such a great combo and both such fun textures. I combined a bag of each type of bean into our clear, plastic storage container, hid some puzzle pieces, and away we went.

Hiding puzzle pieces in a sensory bin is a great way to not only explore the materials and engage in creative play, but also to work on building fine motor skills. Puzzles help strengthen those muscles in little hands, and they allow opportunities for critical thinking and problem-solving.

This Melissa & Doug chunky zoo animal puzzle was absolutely perfect for this bin and both my kids (mostly Tatum, age 2) played with this several different times, for a couple of days in a row. Even after completing the puzzle, she was “feeding the animals” the beans, and then asked for a couple of cups for scooping and pouring.

I shared this activity over on our Instagram page, too, which you can take a peek at here:

This hands-on, engaging, fine motor activity earned itself its very own blog post, friends. I’ll link materials here and give you the jist, but hop over to this post to read more!

Materials:
- cookie sheet
- blue painters’ tape
- mini zoo animal figures

So basically all you have to do to set this up, is tape a bunch of the little animals down to a cookie sheet, and set up a secret mission for your kiddos (or students). Tell them their mission is to rescue all of the animals and let them go to town! The benefits and learning opportunities in this activity are endless and the kids just love it.

I dedicated an entire post to our zoo-themed journal pages, too. The post includes 5 different hands-on, engaging, and fun learning activities with links to materials used, more photos of each activity in action, and details about set-up, how to play, and what kiddos are learning/working on.

You can check this post out here and I promise you don’t want to miss it!

That wraps up our zoo week- I hope you found some inspiration here and are excited to use some of these activities in your own home or classroom!

If you liked these activities, be sure to check out some of our other popular posts:
Activity Ideas for 12-18 Month-Olds
Name Activities
Ocean Activities
Bug Activities
Frog Activities
Apple Activities