Zoo Commissary Dramatic Play

Gather your stuffed animals and make them a meal, just like Zoo keepers and employees do in the National Zoo commissary, where they store and prepare animal food. This activity includes creating your own Zoo Commissary Cookbook for your dramatic play space and a video of Pinky Jackalope modeling the activity with a National Zoo early education specialist. 

Categories

Age Group: Toddler, Preschool
Animal Area: All
ELOF Domain: Approaches to Learning, Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development
Resource Format: PDF
Language: English
Smithsonian Museum: National Zoo
Topic: Food, Animals
A teacher helps a pink jackalope puppet use a toy knife to chop a toy apple to feed to a stuffed sloth bear

Part of the Following Programs

A pink jackalope puppet stands next to a man playing the guitar. On their left is a red ruffed lemur and on their right is a California sea lion.

Fancy Food

What do animals eat? What do humans eat? Are animal diets and human diets similar, different, or both?
Content Unit :
Food
Featured Creature :
Red ruffed lemur, California sea lion
Smithsonian Partners :
National Museum of African American History and Culture; National Museum of American History; National Museum of Asian Art; National Museum of Natural History
ELOF Standards :
IT-C 1; IT-C 3, IT-PMP 4; IT-PMP 11; P-SCI 2; P-PMP 1; P-PMP 5
A cartoon character of a man holding a guitar and a pink jackalope puppet stand next to a western lowland gorilla and a red ruffed lemur.

Food with Friends

Explore the foods that people and animals eat! Discover how our meals can be similar and different, and how sharing food can bring us together.

Content Unit :

Food

Featured Creature :

Western Lowland Gorilla + Red Ruffed Lemur

Featured School :

Holyoke-Chicopee-Springfield Head Start (Massachusetts)

ELOF Standards :

Approaches to Learning; Social and Emotional Development; Language and Communication; Scientific Reasoning