Hobbies And Interests
Zoo Charades
Playing charades with a zoo theme is a great opportunity for kids to act like their favorite animals. Begin by writing animal names onto one side of a deck of index cards. If your children are very young, you might also draw a picture of the animal. The index cards are placed into a fishbowl and each child randomly draws a card on his turn. The object is to act like the animal on the index card until the other players guess which animal the child is supposed to be.
Zoo Matching Game
Matching games involve a deck of cards containing multiple pairs of pictures. The cards are placed, picture-side down, onto a table and children try to find matching cards displaying the same picture. Whoever finds the most matches wins the game. To create a zoo version of this classic game, draw pictures of zoo animals onto blank index cards, being sure that each animal has a match. For instance, there should be two giraffes, two emus, two elephants, and so on. When completed, the children can shuffle the zoo cards and have fun matching them up.
Creating an Animal Game
Help your children learn to create their favorite zoo animals with this index card game. Begin by drawing animal body parts onto index cards. Each animal should have a head, middle and bottom. You would draw the elephant head onto one card, the middle onto another, and the legs and feet onto a final card. Repeat this for other popular zoo animals such as giraffes, alligators, penguins, hippos and more. With all the animals drawn, shuffle the cards. Each child draws cards from the stack and tries to create their zoo animal. The first child to finish her animal wins.
Zoo Masquerade
Encourage creative play by holding a zoo masquerade for your children. Give them white paper plates on which to create zoo masks. One child might be a monkey, while another is a bear and yet another is a moose. Crayons and markers are perfect for coloring the faces of animals. A hole punch and string can be used to fasten the masks to the kids' faces. The rule is that as long as you have your mask on, you have to act like the zoo animal on your mask. The kids can have fun trading masks.