Teachers and parents! Zoopa has many learning possibilities beyond the alphabet. I have put together a list of activities you can do to bring literacy, science, math and art into your classroom or home, using Zoopa as a guide!

LITERACY:
Although Zoopa is a wordless book, children can brainstorm extensive lists of animals for each letter. You can do a few samples with the whole class and then direct children to continue in partners or small groups. Then, have the children illustrate their words-- art is an excellent motivator. You can create a class book of the lists and pictures and students can read them aloud in an "author's chair".

SCIENCE:
Discuss the attributes of the different animals depicted in Zoopa! Children can do Venn diagrams of herbivores and carnivores, four-legged and two-legged, etc. You can also ask students to design masks that represent each one of the 26 animals in Zoopa and act it out as reader's theater. Animals also live in various habitats, so brainstorm the myriad habitats where the animals reside when they're not in a bowl of soup!

MATH:
Students can count and name the animals as they arrive. Perhaps each student can be assigned a particular animal and, as with the reader's theater, you can reenact the arrival of the animals. In addition, purchasing some alphabet soup letters and allowing children to sort them into groups covers sorting, attributes and potential probability.

ART:
As mentioned above, masks, class illustrated books and even paper-mache puppets will engage any child. The medium used in Zoopa is gouache, which is most similar to watercolors. Students can draw their animal of choice, first with pencil, then outline it in permanent marker and then paint it with watercolors. Laminate them and make a bulletin board of their beautiful paintings.