Pets, Pets, Pets

Taft has a new techer at preschool and she has asked for a little help with coming up with crafts for the kids.  Each week they have a shape, color, and theme.  This week at Taft's preschool, the theme is pets. The first project that came to mind was a pet collage. I happened to be fortunate enough to have a HUGE supply of outdated magazines. I work in a office where we take the old ones out of the waiting room and I have been collecting them. I guess I somehow knew that they would one day come in handy.

I cut out every dog, cat, bird, fish, and hamster that I could find.  Mostly pet food ads.  I love all the different animals that I found.  I bagged them all up with a sheet of off white paper for each child.  I can't wait to see what animals Taft picks to go on his collage. 

The next pet project was a bird. When I think about pet birds, I think about little blue and yellow canaries. I just started with a simple coloring sheet that you can get here. I printed them on white cardstoock and made a BIG bag of yellow and blue tissue squares for the children to glue on the birds as feathers. I think they would be really cute if the birds were cut out afterwards and hung around a room.
I found it easiest to cut the tissue with a paper cuter. I use a Caterpillar. It made even neat cuts which is not easy with tissue. You can get a big pack of pastel tissue at Dollar Tree so it makes for a very inexpensive craft.

 I also did a fish bowl. I found the idea here. I loved the simple bowl and the fish but Taft is only 2 and his class is not working on numbers. I used the fish as a template to cut out orange and yellow fish for the children to glue in their bowl. I am hoping they will color their water blue.

I also had to make a change to the bowl. I scanned it in to the computer and enlarged it. It was then printed on cardstock.
Here are some links to some other cute projects and coloring sheets for animals/pets:
Fish Paper Plate Craft
Fish Themed Coloring Sheets
Cat Themed Coloring Sheets
Dog Toilet Paper Roll Craft
Turtle Craft