Animal Helpers

This week our community helpers are all people that service animals.  Today, we are learning all about veterinarians.  So in keeping with our theme, Bristol and Ryan started their day playing with all sorts of different animals in the touch and feel pool.  Animals of different colors and sizes, farm animals, zoo animals, animals that might be found in the backyard, mama animals, baby animals...lots of animals!  We talked about all the different sounds that each animal made and most importantly we learned that the doctors that help animals are called veterinarians!

On the playground, Bristol and Ryan continued their usual fun with balls but also added a few new activities.  Ryan made some new friends as he raced shopping carts around the playground.  Every time they reached the starting line, they waited patiently for me to say "READY, SET, GO!"

Bristol was particularly interested in "stopping" and "going" in a Little Tikes car and tried very hard to carry up to three balls at once to reach the top of the slide and then push them all "down!"

For Language Circle we read the book, Sally Goes to the Vet, by Stephen Huneck.  This is a sweet story about Sally, a black Labrador Retriever,who narrates her experience about getting hurt while playing chase with her best friend, a cat named Bingo.  Sally tells all about how the veterinarian listens to her chest, gives her an x-ray and a shot, and tells her to take her medicine, get lots of rest, and then sends her home.  When we finished the book, we talked about how vets are doctors to all different kinds of animals.  I brought several special animals from home...a bird, a snake, a cat, a dog, a fish (which was Bristol and Ryan's favorite), and we used the same doctor kit from last week so that Bristol and Ryan could practice being veterinarians themselves. They listened to the animals ears and chest, and gave them a shot.  They also enjoyed making the fish open his mouth wide and say, "AHH!" while they checked his throat and fed him an alphabet lunch (plastic letters!).  

Then we made a simple graph with pictures of different animals and objects and answered the question, "Who does a vet help?"  Bristol and Ryan had to decide if vets fix birthday cake, tractors, bunnies, cats, dogs, pandas, apples, etc. They thought this question was pretty silly!  

Finally, to end our very busy language activity today, Bristol and Ryan made their own birds and glued beautiful feathers on their bodies so that their birds could fly.  We talked about how the feathers felt and labeled their different colors.  Neither one of them were too fond of how the feathers felt, but they happily squeezed glue all over their birds to make those feathers stick!  

After we made our birds we had a few minutes left to play with shaving cream.  We practiced making shapes, letters, different types of lines, and silly designs in the shaving cream as we vocalized silly sounds and words and learned that it is okay to be messy and lots of fun too!

After a good hand-washing, we left a very fragrant room to go have lunch.  As you can see it was a super busy and fun day.  We are going to talk about veterinarians again on Thursday.  Looking forward to seeing Bristol and Ryan for another great day!