Words & stories
Toy-animal zoo
- Builds: Animal names and sounds
- 10 min
- Ages 1–3
- Calm
- No mess
From the house
- Toy animals
- Boxes, bowls or blocks for homes
- Blocks as food
How to play
- Build a home for each animal from bowls and boxes.
- They feed each one: “What does the lion eat?”
- Make each animal’s sound together.
- Bedtime at the zoo: put every animal to sleep.
Fit it to your child
- Easier: Hold up one animal at a time, make its sound and wait for them to copy.
- Harder: Describe an animal without naming it, “It’s big and gray with a long trunk”, and they find it.
Words to use
- roar
- moo
- home
- hungry
- sleep
Why it helps
Animal sounds are easy first words to copy, and feeding each animal and putting it to bed adds names and action words around them.
Grown-up eyes: For little ones, use animals too big to fit through a toilet-paper roll.