Zoo Field Trip

Anyone else beyond tired of staying at home? I bet it's not just me. It's been so nice here lately the temperature has cooled off to be able to open the windows and it's nice to be outside again. Going for walks around the neighborhood is nice and some parks are open, zoos and apple orchards are opening and people are getting outside.

Last week we went on a field trip. My friend is homeschooling her 3 year old for preschool this year. She posts all her activities on Instagram @its.raining.menz. I'll help her with planning some speech activities for him because he just started speech back up at school. So I'll help her carryover the goals his speech therapist has made for him and I helped her during the summer when he wasn't getting anything.

I printed the zoo's map and laminated it. That way he could mark of what animals we saw and we could plan where we were going. He did great saying where to go like "around the water". I demonstrated phrases like "past the carousel", "We turn by the Rhino." or "The zebra is next to the camels." He needs to work on his /s/ so we practiced with "seal, snow leopard, sleeping bear"

We were able to count the kangaroos and his number for the week is 4, so how appropriate. We also talked about the animals, what were they doing. Part of his lesson was learning about the animal's habitats. So the kangaroo lives on the land, they're eating grass. Some were sleeping. Some had a white spot on the side. We compared how they were the same and different.

All the buildings were closed which was a bummer because we couldn't see penguins or dolphins. He really wanted to see the parrot because he made one as an art project but that was closed too. We still had a great time and saw so many animals. It was great to be outside, although the bees were horrible. It was so nice to get outside and he got so much practice with his speech sounds and didn't even know it.

I know out here apple orchards and pumpkin patches are open. I plan to hit the apple orchard this weekend. I want to make apple everything. When my friend did an apple theme a few weeks ago they went to pick apples are well.

So many families have chosen to homeschool and just because it's called homeschooling doesn't mean you have to always stay home. They can learn so much from being outside and exploring. Most of the time, you can sneak in some speech sound practice or preposition practice. Right now lots of fall things go around Farms, some pumpkin patches and apple orchards also have a small farm area (that may or may not be available). They can practice naming animals or doing animal sounds. They can count the apples you get or name the colors, red apple, green apple, yellow apple. Which also is working on two-word phrases.

They can work on naming animals and sounds at the zoo too of course. We got to feed the giraffes. For older kids, you can read books about a specific animal and then go see it at the zoo. Then talk about all the things you learned. Or do a scavenger hunt at the zoo. Find an animal that swims, the lives on land, that eats grass, that eats meat, etc. Just make sure the animals you're trying to target are available to see. We couldn't see the monkey's and he was a little disappointed, not going to lie, so was I.

At the end of our zoo trip, we had our map all marked up so we knew what we got to and how we got there. We used wet-erase markers so we can clean it off for next time but it didn't rub off so easily like the dry erase markers do. +