Our class is spending the next few weeks going on a safari trip to Africa to learn about many of the animals that live there. Since we are learning the letter Nn this week and our favorite lion's name is Nelson, it was only fitting that we learned about lions this week. We spent Monday brainstorming about things we already knew about lions and what we wanted to learn about them. Here is what we came up with... (we are still coming up with questions of what we want to learn more about)
On Tuesday, we talked about what we should bring on our safari trip. We brainstormed a list of items to pack in a backpack that would be helpful for our trip. Each time someone came up with an item, we discussed why or why not it would be useful to bring it along. Here is what we came up with.
Then we went on a "hunt" around our classroom to look for many of these items. When all of them were found, we put them into a backpack.
Afterwards, all of the children made their own paper backpacks and included items they wanted to bring on their safari trip. They cut out pictures of items and glued them on the back of their backpacks. Lastly, they labeled each item with words.
Each day this week we have been reading a new book about lions. We have been learning about the difference between the "non-fiction" and "fiction" books. Non-fiction books often include photographs instead of drawings (although they can contain drawings), often have a table of contents page, may include page numbers and teach us real information or facts. We are learning a lot about lions. Each child is making a lion book where they write down facts they learned. See if your child can tell you some facts about lions. Here are some of the books we've read this week.
Today we took our first "safari trip." We closed our eyes to visualize what we would see when we went to the Savanna. We then discussed what pictures we came up with in our minds and what we would see on our safari trip. Some children said we'd see zebras drinking from a lake, grass, trees, lion cubs, and hyenas. We then packed our pretend backpacks, strapped them on and got ready to leave. We left to go on a "lion hunt." As we marched around the classroom, we sang a song together and we looked out for lions. In our song we had to chop down trees, walk through the tall grass, trek through mud, swim through a lake, go inside a cave and at last we ran into a LION! When we saw it we were very scared so we ran the other way. We had to go back the way we came...going through the cave, swimming in the lake, trekking through the mud, walking in the tall grass, and chopping down trees until we arrived safely back in our classroom. Phew! What a fun safari trip we had! There will surely be lots more exciting safari expeditions in our future. Look for future posts about our visits to the Africa.
