Have fun being YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL A child’s interest in animals can show up in many different ways. Children who love animals want to read books about them, see movies about them, visit zoos and animal sanctuaries, dress up in animal costumes, make animal sounds, adopt all sorts of animals as house pets, and even pretend to be animals. Young fans of the animal kingdom are often full of questions about animal ways and habitats. Wildlife documentaries are usually their first-choice viewing during television time. Some children even enjoy experimenting with how it must feel to live like some of the animals that have so thoroughly captured their imaginations. This Spotlight includes a number of creative ideas for children who love animals—imaginative ways to play and to think about animals. We hope you’ll take a look at these ideas and add some of your own activities to offer fun experiences for animal-loving children. “Talk like the animals …” Build a beaver lodge. Pretend to be a beaver living in the lodge with its family. Then, be the beaver coming out of the lodge to build dams or to explore and hunt for food. Build a wooden house for your cat. Building a cat shelter and attaching it to a tall post gives your cat a handy place to keep watch for other animals. Please turn the page for more ideas. More bright ideas: WHERE TO GO and WHAT TO DO for FUN! Imaginative animal play begins with a spirit of fun Find a place where your favorite animal likes to be. If that animal lives in the woods, find a place in the trees, on the rocks, or by a stream. If your favorite animal is a farm animal, find a place in a barn or pasture. Make yourself comfortable and wait there for a while. Watch for other animals. Listen for animal sounds. “… from the tiger’s view of things” “… where a deer slept” Go into the woods. If you have an animal tracks book, take it with you. Find a place where you think a raccoon, a rabbit, or a mountain lion might live. Look for tracks. If you don’t find any, use a stick to make some on the ground. Later take your friends out and ask them to identify the animal tracks. Look for the places where animals sleep. Deer, bears, and wild turkeys sleep in the woods. Cows, horses, and pigs sleep in barns. Squirrels sleep in nests in the trees. If you can’t find the places where animals sleep, make a place for them. “… the way the monkey moves” You can see all of these ANIMALS in our area: “… with the stealth of a mountain lion” Possibilities, a project of the Center for Innovative and Promising Practices at the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (H128J000084).The Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute is a not-for-profit organization conducting asset-based activities that promote and enhance the healthy development of children, families, and communities. www.experiencethepossibilities.info Animal-loving children delight in furry, feathered, or fishy friends Many children are fascinated by members of the animal kingdom. Be they wild or domestic, free or captive, viewed from a safe distance or cuddled close in small arms, animals of all sorts are magnets for the interest of many children. Our area offers a wealth of ways—many of them very child-friendly—to interact with animals. Animal exhibits, animal shelters and clinics, pet shops, farms, stables, and special pet-adoption days are just a few of the opportuni- ties. Nature trails, public parklands, duck ponds, fishing holes, and other outdoor sites provide even more opportunities for animal sighting and observation. A child's interest in animals can be very specific— a particular breed of dog, for example—or embrace an entire world of "critters." Discovering all kinds of ways to "talk to the animals" might become a pastime your whole family will enjoy! Is this something you like to do? • Offer to walk your neighbors’ dogs. • Examine shallow ponds for signs of fish, frogs, turtles, and other creatures. • Watch the newspapers for announcements of “pet adoption days” so you can simply stop by to stroke and romp with all the puppies and kittens. • Make regular treks to a favorite duck pond. • Volunteer to help at a “dog wash” fundraiser, animal shelter, or animal rehabilitation facility. • Visit petting zoos at school fairs. If so, you’re a true animal lover! More bright ideas: WHERE TO GO and WHAT TO DO for FUN! Where to find friendly creatures in our community Possibilities, a project of the Center for Innovative and Promising Practices at the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (H128J000084).The Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute is a not-for-profit organization conducting asset-based activities that promote and enhance the healthy development of children, families, and communities. www.experiencethepossibilities.info Feathered friends are FUN and fascinating! Does your little one stop and listen with obvious most communities—they can be as near as a child's pleasure to birdsong? Is she always the first one to bedroom window and as appealing as the protected spy a nest cradled in the branches of a bush or tree? bird habitats in a well-planned nature preserve. Does he make sketches of birds and bring home Interest in feathered creatures may begin with the picture books about birds from the library? Are simple task of tending backyard feeders and parakeets, and cockatiels on her list of "the world's birdbaths, then grow into sighting and identification greatest pets?" expeditions complete with day packs, binoculars, and If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, field guides. you may have a true "birder" in the family. Young bird We hope your bird-loving child will enjoy many of lovers may be bird watchers, bird owners, or both! the activities and resources listed in this Spotlight. Opportunities for bird watching are abundant in It's for the birds! Take wing with these projects: grains such as millet, wheat, and oats; pieces of dried or fresh fruit; and sugar water (for hummingbirds). et up a bird-feeding station. Choose a location S you can see from a window. Be sure it's near any children enjoy preparing special treats perches and hiding places so visiting birds will feel M for wild birds who spend the winter months in safe. This way you're not only feeding birds, you're our area. In mid December, why not decorate a creating a handy bird watching spot, too! "Christmas tree" especially for the birds? Find a Foods a bird-feeding station might contain are: pretty evergreen in your yard or a nearby wooded sunflower seeds in a hanging feeder; a lump of suet area. Adorn its branches with appealing food (beef fat), plain or mixed with seeds, suspended in a "ornaments" for the birds: pine cones stuffed with wire mesh container or a plastic mesh onion bag; peanut butter and rolled in mixed seeds; suet blocks cracked corn in a feeder or sprinkled on the ground; suspended from colorful ribbons; garlands of popped and peanut butter stuffed into holes you've drilled or corn; wreaths of cranberries; dried apple rings; and carved in a piece of wood hung from a tree branch. orange-half "baskets" filled with birdseed. Other foods to attract and nourish birds are raw, It's also a good idea to give birds a source of unsalted peanuts and other chopped nuts; coconut; drinking water near this tree. A shallow bowl or tray More bright ideas: WHERE TO GO and WHAT TO DO for FUN! Resources for bird-loving children Local bird-watching sites: filled with water and placed on the ground or a tree or neighborhood. Check with local home improvement/ stump is a good choice. Remember to replenish the bird hardware stores to find out when children's wood- foods and water throughout the cold months. crafting workshops focusing on bird houses and feeders might be scheduled. Also, check the library for books n the spring, place handfuls of sphagnum moss, bits with instructions for these projects. Find out how to I of cotton, and short lengths of soft yarn or string in clean out the houses at the end of the nesting season so the branches of a bush or tree. Birds will gather these that birds can use them safely year after year. treasures and weave them into their nests. Children like spotting these offerings in birdhouses and trees later in ake a bird walk with your family. See how many the season. T different kinds of birds you can find. egin a lifetime bird-sighting journal. This is a way ake a bird shadow puppet. Cross your hands at B for a child to keep a record of all the types of birds M the wrists with both palms facing toward you. he or she sees. Have fun making and illustrating your Hook your thumbs together. Place your hands between a own small booklet, or buy a blank book or an official light source and a blank wall to produce a bird-shaped sighting list for this purpose. It's fun to identify each shadow on the wall. Your thumbs form the bird's head bird you spot, record the date, time, and place of the and your fingers are its wings. Move your fingers to sighting, and describe the bird's appearance or what it make your shadowbird fly! was doing when you saw it.