welcome to our zoo

In the classroom that I assist in we have an awesome loft. It is often used as a kitchen. The kids love playing up on the loft the way that it is. However, when I saw it the first time I saw a blank canvas and so much more than your typical "playing house" dramatic play. One of the students in our class suggested we turn the loft into a zoo this month. The lead teacher has a huge tub of old beanie babies that would be perfect for it! So without further adieu, welcome to our zoo!

I love having the students use their own writing!

 

I decided to start by creating the different habitats as a background. We have a desert, a backyard, a rainforest, a savanna, the arctic and an ocean. I was originally happy with this, but something was still missing. I decided to have students create a few animals for the different habitats and use their own writing to label. Here are a few samples of their work. 

A cheetah was caught creeping through the grass in our savanna.

A tiger stalking it's prey in the rainforest.

A seahorse clinging to some seaweed in the ocean.

Here's how our loft turned out. The students absolutely love sorting the animals into their proper habitats and learning about new animals. Who knew beanie babies could be so useful??

I wonder what else I could turn our loft into...