Yesterday we celebrated “Mammal Day”. This was a fun yet educational day centered around learning more about mammals. Can I just say my daughter is in heaven learning about animals! Learning is so much more exciting when the subject matter appeals to you!

Here is a brief run down of our day:

Sorted through all the small plastic animals on our biome board and pulled out just the mammals for our day of mammal fun!

Drank milk- since all mammal moms give their babies milk

Played some animal games on the iPad- specifically apps on mammal tracks (iTrack Lite and Critter Trax) and Animal Sounds. We looked at some mammal tracks (and scat- gross but interesting to a 4 year old). We also listened to different animal sounds and tried to guess what animal made it. It was a lot of fun!

Read mammal books: Pulled out a lot of our non fiction mammal books and sat on the couch looking at them! As we were reading we talked about the features of mammals: all mammal mothers give their babies milk, most have hair, most are born live (not from a hard egg), are warm blooded, and breathe through lungs.

Biped/ quadraped play-dough animal tracks: I thought it would be fun to make and sort animal tracks! The great thing about this activity was that I set out all the supplies and when my daughter got to the table she exclaimed: “Mom! Let’s make animal tracks!” I love it when she “comes up” with a prescheduled activity. It makes it seem so child-directed. 🙂

Pattern Match- I printed some pics of animals and their skin from Google Images. After playing a brief matching game with the cards we ran over to my daughters room and tried to figure out which animal skins were on her blanket (This adorable blanket was made with lots of love by Boo’s grandma– isn’t it the cutest!)

Field Journal:  Added stickers to our mammal divider card and added a whole bunch of mammal cards to Boo’s Field Journal. I found some free printables at National Geographic Kids and downloaded 99% of them. It took FOREVER, but they were free and very informative. (More posts to come explaining this field journal- it is going to be a collection of all animal types and habitats- so stay tuned for that!)

I taught Boo how to draw a cat. So simple, and yet it was fun to add in a little drawing lesson. And she was so proud of her accomplishment! Isn’t it super cute!

The last thing we did on mammal day was to take our mammals outside and play. Originally we had just the sea mammals in the water, but a couple land mammals decided to go for a swim 🙂

Funny side note- this morning my daughter said that her little plastic snake wanted to participate in mammal day because she was special and gave milk to her babies and had hair. Points for creativity!

Its off to plan for “Bird Day”. Happy Teaching!