Preschool Activity Ideas
  Play Zoo Learning Games

The best free home school preschool activity ideas plus learning ideas for older siblings. Set up your own Zoo, watch a live animal cam, build a visitor's train and have a Zoo party!

Kids Zoo Activity

Running your own Zoo has to be one of the most successful homeschool preschool activities that has skills for all ages.

You're guaranteed to learn all sorts of homeschool math, science, reading, writing and geography while having fun.

A fantastic way to start your home school preschool activity is to pay a virtual visit to a Zoo first.

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• Come and see the live animal cams at San Diego Zoo!
  

• And the Smithsonian National Zoo has live web cams to see lions, cheetah cubs, clouded leopards and gorillas.

You can build the enclosure for your zoo by practicing home school preschool craft using Lego, wooden blocks or cardboard boxes. 

• Lots of opportunities for adding in more homeschooling preschool activity ideas here. You could add a toy train track or build one for free by laying down tissue paper. How about building a Sea Lion enclosure with blue card for water and some real rocks for them to sit on?
  

• Visit our home school science page to see how you can use this fun activity to learn about habitats
  

• You could help your child draw out a plan of your home school Zoo first. Once you've marked out the enclosures, you could add the animals using animal stencils (more about homeschooling stencils later).

• We've made drawing animals easy for preschool children by using home school hand art. Come and see how with our preschool craft activity ideas for free homeschool Preschool Art Activities.

• You may need to start by going on homeschooling animal collecting expeditions for the Zoo. You'll need a toy land rover or truck, toy binoculars for spotting animals and a homeschooling fishing net for catching them!

• Set up an animal hospital in the Zoo as part of your home school activities. 

• One of the great free homeschool preschool activity ideas is to take turns being the vet. Use a real thermometer to check the animal's temperature and detachable stereo headphones make perfect free home school stethoscopes.
  

• Home school preschool math comes from buying tickets from the Station Master for the Zoo train and working out how much you'll need for the ice cream stand.
  

• Monica recommends this brilliant-looking Mammals app which has interactive animals so you can see how they play, eat, see, run, fly, grow, and feel.  In the UK you can get it here.
  

• If you want more ideas about how to teach homeschool preschool math, see how some preschool butterfly craft can teach symmetry and geometry.
  

• Set up a home school dinosaur park activity enclosure and add in all your favorite friends. My daughter Catherine's were always escaping and wreaking homeschool havoc!

• Don't forget to collect the animal waste! Cotton wool balls make perfect non-smelly homeschool substitutes. 

• My children William and Catherine decided to fly over their home school Zoo in a plane, which fits in brilliantly for preschool activity ideas to help learn homeschool geography and transportation in our project traveling the world.
  

• Adding a home school Aquarium into your Zoo is a great activity which could form part of our Ocean Creatures Unit.

• Your preschooler will love any activity which involves dressing up as a Zoo animal. How about adding in some preschool craft by making a homeschool paper mache mask of a lion?

Zoo Activities For Older Siblings

Preschool activity ideas are even better when you can adapt them so older siblings learn all sorts of fascinating things.

Here's Jamie to show you what her children age 10, 9 and 8 got up to:

Another fabulous idea for older children is to:

Make A Zoo Video

• You could help make a Zoo slideshow like this one Sheila made:
  

As a finale to your homeschooling Zoo project, I'm going to add in one of our preschool craft activity ideas because you can use it to create a rather spectacular end to your homeschool Zoo activities.

Stencil Craft Activities

Stencils are perfect for homeschooling preschool craft and you can use them for all sorts of homeschool learning activities.

Here are some home school preschool ideas for how to have fun with stencil craft activities and add them into your Zoo project:

• Get your children to make their own homeschool animal T-shirts using stencils. T-shirts look great painted with stencils and it's not too hard to use fabric paints for preschool craft even when you're homeschooling young preschoolers. William and Catherine loved showing off their homeschool Elephant and Giraffe tops! 

• Buy some homeschooling alphabet stencils. Great for homeschooling preschoolers in letter shapes; even more magical for your preschooler to find you can produce something which actually makes up a name. How about a fun activity writing out the notice for the lion enclosure to add into our fun alphabet activities and worksheets?
  

Zoo Party Activity

Now's the time to use those stencils for free preschool fun. 

• Get lots of preschool kids round to create a colorful mural on a large piece of wallpaper.

•  Your kids can even make free animal stencil Party Invites!
  

• There are lots of free home school Zoo party games to choose from. A good one is getting each preschool child to pretend to be a different animal.
  

• You can see lots of craft ideas for making free home school dressing-up props, including a feather headdress, in our homeschooling activities for 2 year olds.
  

What a lovely way to end your project.

As you can see, homeschooling preschool activity ideas are all about using fun and your child's interests to help them learn about the exciting world we live in.

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