Learning At Home: Safari

This month, the theme for home learning is "Safari"! The Bees are crazy over The Lion King movie, and they both suggested excitedly to me that they wanted to learn about safari animals. And it is indeed a very fun theme, with an overwhelming array of activities!

We did mainly craftwork this time, as I had to juggle with Big Bee's homework every night. However, I still managed to let Big Bee do some fun safari games online that taught her the habitats of different animals and the geographical areas that different animals live in. She chose not to do some of the easier crafts this time as she thought they are too simple for her!

For Little Bee, I supplemented these craftwork with new learning on lower-capped alphabets, as she is learning those in her weekend classes. She is beginning to pick up on some letters, calling them "Big A" and "Small A". She had also started writing some new alphabets like "N", "T", and "e".

We kickstarted this series with an interesting craftwork of creating a giraffe with a movable neck, so that we can teach the kids about giraffes having long necks. True enough, Little Bee kept telling me that giraffes have "nong nong necks".





Big Bee's bowing giraffe in a field of grass with lovely mountains behind. I made her spell out Giraffe to put some spelling into this exercise.


Little Bee's giraffe. I make her paste the alphabet "Gg" so she can recognise the "big" and "small" letters, and 15 below stands for the number of spots on the giraffe. She drew the giraffe eye with a perky eyelash - by accident, I think!

Little Bee also wanted to make The Lion King, so one night, we created a lion mask which Big Bee and my Mum commented that it looked more like a flower mask with pointy ears! Hm...


ROAR!!!!

Little Bee also made a very simple elephant head with just a painted paper plate and 5 pieces of blue construction paper for the ears, eyes and trunk! Very easy craft that she can do with minimal guidance, so I can take some break!



Then, the Bees each created a set of binoculars from recycled toilet rolls and we played a hunting game in the safari. Guess who was the lion? Big fat Mummy! ROAR!!!




Little Bee painted everything on this zebra herself - I was quite impressed by her distribution of lines though I chuckled at the zebra's dizzy eyes. I wrote the word Zebra, but she kept mistaking "Z" for "N" and even painted 2 "N"s beside my word, emphasising to me "N for Zebra!" *faint*

Finally, last weekend, to cap off the learning process, we took them to the zoo to see how these safari animals look like - upclose and personal! This time, we managed to see a lot more animals, we went to the Wild Safari section and gaped at the elegantly tall giraffes, placid zebras and lazy rhinos.



The brave girls then went into Cat Country and roared at lions, posed prettily beside 2 napping cheetahs and ogled at a bored leopard ambling fretfully to and fro. Little Bee kept saying that cheetahs are "lion-cheetahs" - I guess she thinks they both look similar, and they do! We also went into Reptile Land where the Bees stared with amazement at all the slithering snakes and we ventured into the reptile aviary with bated breath, frightened that a chameleon may just materialise near us!

It had been a wonderful learning experience for the girls indeed. They love these safari animals! I think I have to think of a non-animal theme for this month - too many animals around!