Outing - Marwell zoo

(Goblin is 27 months)

Last weekend we went to Marwell zoo with my parents and sister.

Goblin's Granddad is a keen photographer and took some great snaps of the day. So here is our day out in pictures. 

Turtle v Tortoise

(Goblin is 27 months)

Goblin has no interest in learning letters or numbers, but he is fascinated by animals and vehicles. Show him a new animal or vehicle and he wants to know its name, and once told he will remember it for ages.

 We have been reading his new Ocean book. I picked it up in a factory seconds book shop. It has a whole page of nice ocean creature stickers that Goblin loves. And it has lots of new animals to learn (for me as well as Goblin).

In Goblin's Christmas stocking he got a whole bunch of new plastic animals. I had restricted the plastic animals I bought to schleich products because they are superior in quality (and you can buy bundles of them on ebay). But the ones I found on Amazon have nice detail, are about a third of the price and will hold up to toddler play.

I went through the Ocean book and found plastic animals to match some of the creatures in the book. Then as Goblin and I read it, he spotted where there was a matching creature and laid it on the page and I read out the name of the creature.

 As we were going through the book we found a turtle. Goblin has started calling turtles and tortoises the same thing. I know that some adults still have difficulty distinguishing between the two creatures so I thought it would be a useful thing for Goblin to learn. We got both toys and put them next to each other and I pointed out some of the differences like the flatter shell and the fins versus the legs and domed shell.

 When we went to the zoo today I was able to reinforce this. Goblin was really excited when he found a tank full of tortoises. The tortoise in the photo was the fastest one I have ever seen, it appeared to be doing laps round its large tank and Goblin ran from window to window watching it.

 We also found a big bronze tortoise. 

 And a giant tortoise. This was great as Goblin had seen the small one and was now able to that they come in giant as well as small. 

Then to compare we found a brass rubbing of a turtle in one of the activity centres, and we found a basking turtle in the sealion house. You can just see him in the light right at the top of the picture below. Unfortunately this turtle looked very much like a tortoise which confused me. I don't know what Goblin made of it, he was too busy running up and down the sealion tunnel where you can watch them swim over your head.

 Apparently these turtles are Giant Asian Pond Turtles and if you look at the picture on the sign, their legs are more leggy than fin like which would explain why it looked more like a tortoise.

 I was expecting something a bit more like the giant plastic one we found in the picture below.

We have a couple of animal books with tortoises and turtles in it. So I will have to see if our trip to the zoo  has clarified the difference. I think it might take a few more trips. 

I'm linking this to 

Z is for Zoo

(Goblin is 25 months)

I have been holding off doing any letter work with Goblin. He's only just turned two and it seemed a bit young - there are so many other things to learn. But his nursery have started introducing him to letters so I thought it wouldn't hurt to join in as long as its focussed on fun rather than anything serious and educational. So I started today. 

I planned to go to the zoo this afternoon, so I decided we'd do the letter Z this morning in preparation. I cut out a big letter Z using one of Goblin's Autumn leaf paintings, and glued it to an A3 piece of sugar paper. I printed out pictures of the animals we were going to see at the zoo (using google images to find good ones) and cut round them. Then I presented the page and the animals to Goblin with a tub of glue. He put glue on the back of the pictures and stuck them round (and on) the Z. I hung the finished article half way up the stairs so for the rest of the day we saw it at every nappy change. He'd point at it excitedly and I'd remind him it was a Z. Goblin was so excited by the animal pictures that when finished the art work he went and got his tub of schleich animals and matching cards. 

I separated the matching cards into zoo animals and farm animals to add a bit more to this game because he's played it so often he's quite good at the straight matching. After placing most of the animals on the cards he decided they needed to go for a ride in his tractor. 

This gave me a chance to gather up some Zs from around the house and make a Z bin. I left this lying around and Goblin found it later in the morning and excitedly rummages through it. 

 Here is what he found. 

A bean bag, a cube, two flash cards, a magnet, a bottle top and the LeapFrog fridge phonics magnetic alphabet toy. He even turned the LeapFrog toy on and pressed the Z to hear it - he hasn't shown much interest in it previously.

Once he'd finished with his Z bin we did some colouring. Goblin has got really into colouring again recently. I printed off some Z printables from the totschool site (these are such a great resource and they have ones for every letter). 

I'd never tried these with Goblin before and I was really surprised that he didn't just scribble on  them. I showed him how to trace the letter Z (see the one in the top left hand corner) and then I gave him the next one to try. It may not look like much but he was really obviously trying to draw within the lines and follow the Z shape. I was really excited. I also printed off a bingo dabber letter Z sheet. I let Goblin use my old bingo dabber to fill in the spots. 

The ink in a real bingo dabber can stain - everything! You can get crayola chunky markers that are washable kids versions. You can also get kids bingo dabbers on the US amazon site but I couldn't find them in the UK. (Let me know if you find them). 

 One rather cool thing about the adult bingo dabber is that if you hit it hard on the paper it splats. Goblin discovered this and did some splat art. He liked it so much he asked me to stick it on the wall. I stuck it next to his Duck picture (he told us it was a duck) and his coloured in stamp picture in his art corner. After a busy morning and a nap we met Squeak and his mum at the zoo. Goblin wanted to see fish so we went on a rather interesting route round the zoo taking in lots of the aquariums. Our favourite aquarium didn't have any fish in it though. It had sealions. 

When we got home from the zoo we carried on our Z themed day with some letter matching, an animal jigsaw, and some more of the printables from the Totschool set. 

I think I could get quite into this letter thing. It certainly provides lots of options for play and Goblin seems to really enjoy the printables.