Preschoolers and Pets

About 2 months ago, we adopted a Golden Retriever named Bailey.

Our last golden, Peyton, passed away on August 22, 2017.  He was 12.5 years old. 

It was so hard.  Especially having to explain to our girl what happened.  She still remember him and talks about him.  However, we remind her that Peyton is with Jesus and Jesus has healed him.

Now we have Bailey, who absolutely loves my kids.  

 She just turned a year old, and Bailey is Avaleigh's best friend.  They play outside together, explore things together, and Avaleigh has been learning how to take care of Bailey.

Our Alphabet House unit from Mother Goose Time had a week long study on chores including Caring for Pets.

I asked Avaleigh what she does to take care of Bailey.

"I keep an eye on her.  I give her some treats (lots of treats, really) and food.  I give her sweet pets and play with her."

Here they are playing in the sprinkler a few weeks after we got Bailey.  This sweet dog, who loves to be outside, has helped my girl play more outside and learn to entertain herself instead of wanting me all the time.

MGT had us start our lesson with a color matching game that went to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.  I just substituted her name and bird.  Avaleigh has known her colors for a few years now, but she always loves a matching game.  Here's a little video of us playing.

After doing our color matching game, we did our Make and Play craft which was a little book called 

I Love My Pets.  She was to draw the pets on each page or glue pictures of them that MGT provided.  I was surprised they didn't include a dog as one of the pets to draw.  I walked her through how to draw each animal which was something new for her, and she wrote her name!  She hardly ever needs help with writing her name anymore.  I must say, my girl loves to color and draw and I was so impressed with her drawings!

I was seriously impressed.  I would tell her things like "Draw a circle for it's head." or "A rabbit has whiskers.  Draw 3 lines on each side of its' face for whiskers." 

 I love how she added bubbles for the fish.

Our final activity was Build a Bird which I left her to do on her own while I dealt with her 6 month old brother.  Basically she flipped over a little card, found the corresponding body part and built a bird on the provided bird cage.

We closed out our Caring for Pets day by reading How Do Dinosaurs Choose Their Pets from our local library.  I wish they had How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? or How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? but they didn't.  She loves these Dinosaur books, which I would have never known about had I not looked at MGT book list a few months back when we studied dinos.  

I am definitely ordering the dog one... I linked some below.

          

We had a lot of fun learning how to care for pets from MGT.
More importantly, I have actually seen her have fun caring for her pet, Bailey.


Happy Learning!