Welcome to Zoo Park!! Clara has recently mastered building simple houses with blocks, so we thought it would be fun to build a zoo using a set of wooden blocks and some mix-matched toy animals. It was a fun exercise for her to sort all the animals, then fine-motor practice to build all their houses. This zoo has been a big hit!
Even though Clara and I built the zoo, Emily wasted no time joining in the fun as soon as she arrived home from school! After all, who can resist death-defying monkeys??
We enjoyed putting some of Mark’s figurines animal action figures to good use too!
We re-used our love bug trails from last week to make colorful walking paths for our zoo.
And at the center of all the action was the duck pond!!
That pirate duck kept causing trouble, leaving the pond to go search for buried treasure…silly duck!
Have fun!!
I added this post to:
Nurture Store’s Carnival of Small World Play
What an exotic zoo!
Looks like you have the same block set as us =)
Yes, I think so! It’s the Melissa & Doug Unit block set. It was a Christmas gift from my parents, and the girls have played with it EVERY day since!! (Okay, and I’ve played with it too!) 😉
I love your zoo – what a creative mini-world. I like the sign for it too 🙂
Thanks, Natalie! Emily was particularly proud of her zoo sign. 🙂 She’s moved on to making signs for all the animals now too.
Dear Valerie,
I am glad that you are calling the “figurines” by the proper terminology. Action figures!
Love,
Mark
Riiiiight…. 😉
Blocks and animals is one of our fave games too. A little boy i look after often asks me to help him make a zoo. ours is mainly pens from blocks which he groups the animals in too. but now he is getting older i might try and encourage a few squigles on sticky notes for signs……. I bet he would like that!
Great duck pond. and theres always one that makes trouble lol!!
I love hearing stories of kids (and grown ups!) playing with blocks — makes me SO happy!! I think his squiggle signs would be SO cute! xoxo
Did they have “quackers” and cheese for an afternoon snack? (hee! hee!)
Zookeeper rounds just ended… I’ll go find out! 😉
That is so cute! Abby has built many farms for her LPS and they are so fun!
Awwww… so sweet!
I love the duck pond!
Thanks so much, Christy! 🙂 I think we need to add another pond for the frogs & turtles.
Also, Emily questioned the climate for the penguins, saying that perhaps it was too warm for them. I told her they were African penguins. 😉 Problem solved!
This is so cute! We’re just starting a zoo theme and plan on visiting the zoo this weekend. We have a pile of plastic animals and will have to do this as a follow up activity.
What fun!!! Amazing how many plastic animals we’ve accumulated over the years…. Not sure how that happened!
I love how the ducks are so much bigger than all the other animals. Cracks me up!
LOL Emily thought that was SO funny too!!! Especially when compared to the elephants! Yeah, not _exactly_ to scale, but still lots of fun. 🙂
Ooh, you should make a whole sea world exhibit, We could bring over our collection of sea life “figurines” and join the fun!
I keep intending to do this, but have never followed through. Maybe when we study Noah’s ark again….
What fun!! We have that same pirate duck 🙂 He is always causing trouble at our house 😛
We did this!
But sadly the only person who enjoyed it was Mommy. Oh well! Thanks for the inspiration once again!
http://everythingaveri.blogspot.com/2011/02/simply-frustrating.html
Hi Valerie,
If your girls love animals, they surely love dolphins, right? 🙂 For a writing assignment when my mom homeschooled me,I wrote a children’s book called “Demi and the Dolphins”, and we’ve recently published it. I would love your opinion on it!
The book teaches all kinds of lessons, like the importance of obeying the law, ecology, and volunteering. You can see more at my blog http://demiandthedolphins.authorsxpress.com or email me. Can’t wait to talk to you about it 🙂 Thanks!