Uniquely Erin Nicole: Zoo, Where Are You? - Read. Learn. Explore Link up

Zoo, Where Are You? written by Ann McGovern

It is about a little boy named, Josh, who doesn't have a zoo near his town. He decides he is going to make a zoo of his own. He grabs a few essentials and heads out to look around his neighborhood for animals to create a zoo of his own.

As he searches for his zoo he imagines types of animals that he can find in specific locations. When he actually arrives at the locations he doesn't find animals, but he does find other 'treasures'. He brings the treasures home to share with his mom. They discuss his, beautiful junk, and he sets out to find more.

At the end of the story he comes to the conclusion that despite the fact that he wasn't able to find animals for his zoo, he created a different type of zoo. He created a zoo full of junk. Josh determined his zoo full of junk to be better than any zoo with animals because he doesn't have to cage the zoo, feed or water it, or keep it happy. He can just look at it and enjoy it.

This was one of my favorite books to read as a child. As you can tell from the cover it has seen its better days. My mom got it from a library sale when they were getting rid of old books. I used to LOVE reading it over and over with her. Reading it with my boy and recalling how much I enjoyed the book made our reading time even more special.

After reading the story B, G, Baby M, and I set out to make a zoo of our own!

First, we made Wild Animal Catching Bags

We used white paper sacks and foam stickers to decorate them. G was very excited to do this project (he's 4) and put quite a few stickers on the bag. B (he's 6), on the other hand, was content to simply write his name on the bag and call it a day. He did write his first, middle, and last names, so at least he was working on his hand writing!

*You could also use markers, crayons, and glue small items onto the bags. I offered these items to the boys, but they didn't want to use them. I think they were ready to get outside.

Next, we grabbed our Wild Animal Catching Bags and set out on a walk (#2 on our activity list) in search of our Zoo

As we searched we sang, Zoo, Zoo, Where Are You Zoo, just as Josh did in the story.

Along our search we came to the pond first. We found some geese. B and G didn't think it would be a very good idea to put geese in the bags so we just stopped to look at them.

On the way back up the hill B found a pine cone to put in his bag.

As we continued G found some flowers that he really liked. He was pretty bummed when I explained that he couldn't put the whole flower in the bag. Luckily, my suggestion of a petal from the ground seemed to appease him!

I'm certain that the entire neighborhood heard the excitement in G's voice as he exclaimed "Look Mommy! I found a wishing flower!" If you couldn't tell, he LOVES flowers, especially dandelions, or dam lions, as he says.

After we finished collecting our things we headed home. Once we got home we dumped out our collections of junk and shared them.

I'm not as cool as Josh's mom. She let just dump his junk on the kitchen table. I made my boys dump their junk on paper towel. I have to be honest I wasn't really thrilled with having all of that on the table that we eat on. Oh well, they loved it and that's what's important!