Come to the Zoo!

Confession:  Life has changed for the kids and me as a mother of 3.  There's less time.  There's more to do.  There's less energy, but more demands.  There's less sleep.  Overall, it seems, there's less accomplished.  There are more needs, more people, and still only one mom (with two hands).  How am I supposed to do it all? 

But that's not what this post is about.  It just sets the stage for me to talk about one of our successes.  Yesterday, poor Addison was so sick :(  102.8 fever, the moans and groans, the tears, the body aches, and yes, some throw up.  Poor guy :(  But, this led to a morning nap from 8:30-12. 

Overlapping with Alana's morning nap, I had some great quality one-on-one timr with Carter.    One of the activities we chose to do was build a zoo.  We did this a year ago (see post), so it was really neat to see how his growth has contributed to the quality of learning and play. 

He sorted the 63 animals with equivalent ease, but this time built the cages more strategically...sharing blocks between cages "to make the most of our building materials" {yes, his words}, being cautious not to put animals next to each other that might get eaten, making an aquarium for the water animals {poor dolphin had to share with the alligator}, and carefully putting animals close together that were similar {the giraffe made him think of the zebra, then the tiger because it had stripes, then the lion because it's a jungle cat, then the leopard, for the same reason, which made him think of the elephant, that's big like a horse, which looks like a moose--I mean a reindeer, etc.}.  After building the zoo, then we had to make a MAP for the visitors.  This is what we came up with:

Next, came Master Carter and Miss Kerri, the zookeepers, who had to count all the animals to make sure none of them escaped.  This proved to be helpful when a panda somehow wondered into the giraffes' cage and a sheep was in the kitchen drinking apple juice during naptime.  An Addison Godzilla was to blame.  After completing the zoo with a sidewalk and a road {the parking lot in the middle is ONLY for CARS cars}, we looked at our creation and called it good.