Watering Whole @Home Curriculum Week 6

In this week’s story Eddy Elephant really wants a pet and Peter Puppy shows Eddy some of his wonderful pet rocks! This week we invite our Watering Whole families to create some pet rocks of their own.

Pet rocks are a wonderful way to teach responsibility as well as ignite the imagination and cultivate creativity.

Step 1:

Spend some time in your garden searching for the perfect rocks that would make wonderful pets. Learn all about size, shape, texture and colour as you explore!

Step 2:

Clean and dry your rocks before you start to paint them. Sort the rocks in different categories…which ones are smooth, which ones are rough, which one is the biggest, which one is the smallest etc.

Benefits include helping children develop visual acuity and have a better understanding of comparisons/differences and patterns which are an important foundation for both language and maths.

Step 3:

Choose different colours for your different pets and add googly eyes or paint on some eyes of your own. You could choose to create different rocks with different feelings here too. Ask your child do you think this pet is feeling happy or sad… angry or scared? And draw on the different feeling expressions (see the feeling buddy lesson from last week for the feeling buddy expressions)

Step 4:

Name your pets! This can be a really fun game as your child comes up with different names and personalities and stories about their pets…what they like, what they are afraid of ,etc… A child can process so much of their own experiences, through stories they create around toys, pets and games which plays a crucial part in early development.

Step 5:

Create a home for your pets. This could be a shoe box or a basket, a nest or a doll house… Get creative and talk to/ask your child about all of the important care that pets need such as shelter, food, water, love, etc.

Kamali had so much fun creating a bed for her pets, feeding them and looking after them 🙂