The Animal theme is very popular in Early Childhood Education. I know when I was a preschool teacher it was a yearly theme we visited for a week or two. The children and I would talk about dogs, cats, birds, and fish. I would spend a week focused on farm animals and then another week exploring zoo animals. I would teach using finger plays, puppets and music. I suspect that this theme remains typical of today’s classrooms. I challenge teachers to enrich this theme by including rich vocabulary such as habitat, mammals, marsupials, biology, etc. I also encourage the use of facts and to explore on a much deeper level by including things like what the animals do all day, what they eat, where they live, and discuss the predators and how they protect themselves. By adding such deeper learning, the theme could be implemented over a much longer time thus increasing learning.
