Ask preschoolers to think critically to design their own zoos. Find a map of a real zoo to show children or create one yourself. Then give children a list of animals that need to live in their zoos. Give children large pieces of paper and art supplies and ask them to arrange all the animals and attractions in whatever order they want. Ask children to think about what kinds of animals might go together, such as snakes and insects or the horses and cows. When they finish their designs, have children explain their zoos to the class.
Use zoos to teach preschoolers about charts and graphs. First make a chart with three columns: "zoo," "house" and "wild." Hold up pictures of animals and ask children to decide where they belong, then tape them to the chart. Make multiple copies of each picture in case animals belong in various places. For instance, elephants can live in zoos and in the wild. Make a graph showing each child's favorite zoo animal. Ask children to name their favorites, then show children how you can turn this information into a graph. Ask children if they can figure out which animals are most popular and least popular by looking at the graph.
Ask children to study books or pictures of animals to find out what type of habitat each animal lives in. Talk about how zoos try to recreate each habitat as much as possible to make the animals feel comfortable. Ask each child to choose one zoo animal, then give children shoe boxes and plenty of art supplies. Help children find pictures of their animals' habitats.. Then ask them to pretend that the shoe box was the animal's space at the zoo. Have children decorate the inside of the box to look like what the animal's space at the zoo would look like.
Nothing will teach children more about the zoo than taking a field trip. If possible, head to the zoo and walk around as a class. At each exhibit, ask children to count how many animals are inside and make observations about what they see. Ask if they can tell how zookeepers enter the exhibit to take care of the animals. If a field trip isn't possible, invite a zoo worker to come speak to the class about her job.