This month for preschool we focused on animal habitats: specifically arctic, jungle, and desert.

The first week was arctic. The boys played in a “snow” sensory bin filled with arctic animals who tried to camouflage into the snow. We painted ice balls and tired to make igloos or little ice caves for the animals in the ice.

The boys also watched a video about  the long sunny summer nights and cold dark winter ones. They saw footage of the northern lights then practiced drawing them with chalk and black construction paper.

For snack time the boys enjoyed making vanilla and fruit pudding pops.

The next week we learned about the jungle. The boys did jungle sticker books while watching a video on different layers of a rain forest.

They made terrariums with bark, moss, and dirt and a rain sticks using toilet paper rolls, foil and rice covering both in stickers of butterflies, parrots, monkeys, and frogs.

They also enjoyed a sensory bin of coffee “dirt”, jungle trees and animals.

For snack time we made tropical pudding parfaits: banana pudding, oranges, pineapple and banana slices and animal crackers for crunch.

Our last week we did desert. The boys enjoyed a sensory bin of cornmeal as “sand” and playing with desert animals. We did sand I spy bottles to show how objects can hide or get lost in sand.

We also explored an aloe plant to see how succulents hold moisture in the desert. The boys enjoyed a show about the rain cycles in the desert while doing a desert sticker book.

After this, we made play dough cactus with rice spikes then had a snack of hummus as wet sand and crushed tortilla chips for the top. For chip dipping we made cactus chips using green spinach wrap tortillas that we cut with cactus cookie cutters then fried up.

For our field trip we contemplated the Zoo, but January is not the best time to try to pull of this trip. Instead we decided to go on a scavenger hunt through our closest big chain outdoor sports store which has a large stuffed animal display . The boys looked for animals on their list from the different habitats and checked them off. Afterwards as a reward they got to choose fudge samples (and the moms bought some to take home for later).

It was a fun month of learning and the boys had a blast! Which habitat would you like to explore?