9 Fun Zoo Lesson Plans and Ideas Plus a Free File!

Zoo lesson plans for kindergarten and first grade. Reading, math & literacy centers, science activities, and a math freebie will keep your students engaged in your zoo unit of study!

#1 Zoo Lesson Plans: Reading

A Sick Day for Amos McGee is one of my favorite books. When Deanna Jump and I were putting together our reading comprehension units, I KNEW we needed this sweet story.

If you haven’t read it, you must check it out now! A Sick Day for Amos McGee is the story of one zookeeper who takes fantastic care of the animals in the zoo. He is so gentle and loving to the zoo animals.

Then one day, Amos gets sick and the animals go to his home.

And with the same level of sweetness, they return the favor. This is one of those books that BEG to be read again and again. This is exactly the type of story that is perfect for a close read.

We’ve included 5 reading lessons and activities to go along the book. There are printable student response pages and also a digital option for Seesaw and Google Slides.

Students work on making predictions.

And also retelling the story with text details. Students will love the elephant craft to display their retelling pictures!

Students end the week by expressing their opinion about the story.

The digital and printable activities for A Sick Day for Amos McGee are included in the Seesaw Engaging Readers unit for May. Click here:

Seesaw Engaging Readers May Books

Zoo Lesson Plans: Math and Literacy Centers

These zoo themed centers are so much fun! From printable to digital, you can use what works for your classroom!

#2 Stamping Center

In my May Stamp It! center, there are math and literacy stamping pages. Students have fun stamping zoo animal names and creating sentences for literacy.

For the math stamping pages, students practice counting and writing number names.

Check out the stamping center, here:

Stamping Center for May

#3 Sentence Work

My huge collection of Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities includes a set of zoo animals. I love these activities so much because you can easily differentiate within your classroom. With three levels, all of your students can be successful and equally challenged! My students loved realizing that they could READ the sentence!!!

These activities also work great as morning work!

You can find the Zoo sentence work activities here:

Zoo: Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw

Or, check out the endless bundle!

Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw Endless Bundle

#4 Digital Sentence Writing

If you are looking for more digital centers, these sentence building activities are great! Students unscramble and build a sentence in Seesaw or Google Slides. Then, they can write the sentence and draw a picture on paper. They can also take a picture of their work with their device camera and upload it to add to their completed activity.

These digital sentence activities are available on TPT. Click here:

Seesaw Preloaded Super Sentences for June

#5 Zoo Themed Digital Centers

More digital centers! Students practice math and ELA skills with these Seesaw centers!

Click here to grab these zoo-themed digital centers:

Seesaw Preloaded Themed Math and Literacy Centers: Zoo

#6 Writing Center

The writing center was always active in my classroom! I would change out the vocabulary cards throughout the year to match our current theme. So, of course, there are zoo themed cards!

Here is the writing center for May:

Writing Center for May

#7 Zoo Lesson Plans: Science

There are several topics in my bundle of Interactive Science Nonfiction Books that would work well with your zoo theme!

This kindergarten class had fun learning about big cats and endangered animals.

Each interactive book is preloaded into Seesaw and also Google Slides, so that means no prep for you! That’s a WIN!

Each digital book reinforces ELA skills and introduces science vocabulary.

Plus, there are audio clips included on each slide so students hear the new science vocabulary and work independently if needed at home or in the classroom.

Check out the bundle of 30 different interactive books, here:

Digital Science Interactive Books Bundle

#8 Zoo Lesson Plans: Math

Work on graphing with this zoo-themed math freebie! You can snag it at the end of this blog post.

#9 Zoo Lesson Plans: Virtual Field Trip

Going to the zoo is a popular field trip for many kindergarten and first grade classrooms! If you are studying zoo animals, but are unable to take a field trip, a virtual field trip is a great option! The San Diego Zoo has an amazing website with live webcams and TONS of resources!

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Deedee Wills

My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!