Baby Bins: Zoo

This week we learned all about elephants, giraffes, monkeys and more with our zoo themed baby bins. We had so much fun exploring sensory bins and creating crafts this week as we learned about zoo animals.

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Here is a look at our 6 animal themed baby bins:

Here are the details for each of our activities:

Zoo Theme Read Aloud:

This week’s book, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell is a well loved staple in our board book collection so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to include one of our favorites as the focus read aloud for baby bins. With adorable animals, flaps to lift, and a surprise ending I’m sure your little ones will love this book just as much as we do.

Build a Zoo Sensory Bin:

In this bin: black beans, alphabet zoo animals, plastic fences, trees

Zoo Sticker Sorts:

Peeling stickers is always a challenge with this age group, but it is so great for building fine motor skills and concentration. So for this activity, I grabbed a bag full of foam animal stickers and drew colored circles on a few sheets of paper. Aubrey worked hard to peel the backing from the colored animals, with help from me, and then sorted them into the correct color zoo exhibit.

Zoo Bath Sensory Play:

In this bin: zoo animal puppets, water, bubble bath

So originally this bin was going to be just that, a sensory bin. But we were having quite the cranky morning and whenever I need a few minutes to gather my thoughts and renew my patience, a mid day bath usually does the trick. So instead of giving our zoo puppets a bath in a sensory bin, we jumped in the tub and washed them in the bubble bath. So don’t be afraid to put your own twist on any of these activities. You know your kids and what they like best so run with it whenever possible!

Zoo Puzzle Hunt:

In this bin: black beans, Melissa & Doug Safari Puzzle

Aubrey loves puzzles so now that she is over 2 most of our chunky puzzles are really pretty easy for her. But Puzzles + Sensory Bins = new life for old puzzles. Adding the hide and seek factor makes puzzles exciting enough to hold her attention again even when they are pretty simple.

Giraffe Finger Paint:

For a fun craft this week, we created this finger paint giraffe. First, I cut out the giraffe outline and mane pieces. Next, Aubrey dipped her finger in brown paint and stamped on the giraffe to create spots. Then she attempted making snips with a scissors along the brown giraffe’s mane piece to create texture. Finally, with help from me she glued the mane behind the giraffe’s head, added googly eyes to the face and taped 2 pipe cleaners behind the head for horns.

If you are looking for all of the plans and printables for this week’s theme I will be posting them soon! If you’d like to be notified as soon as they are available please subscribe to my newsletter (in the sidebar to the right) and/or join our Tot School and Preschool Facebook group here: