Little Miss Muffett (aka Spider Tales?)

Thursday, B attended the OKC Zoo's two-year old Program. Each month they have a program focusing on a particular kind of animals. For our age group, October was Spider month! I thought the program was wonderful. There were seven little ones along with their parent or grandparent (and Maggie). They started with some teaching, playing with a toy spider, and practice sharing. We moved on to more pictures, stories and examining a tarantula (safely asleep in its acrylic box).

About the time attention started to waiver we did a craft project in which the kids made a spider out of their handprints. (sort of like this). Then it was snack and singing time. Finally, we headed out into the zoo to look for spiders in the wild. There was one more spider story and then we looked at the zoo's spider collection. It was a really well done class and properly paced for kids this age. I would encourage those of you with kids to look for classes like this at your zoo. They are inexpensive and at least at the OKC Zoo take place both during the week and on weekends.

You might be wondering how my lil' B did with all this given his history of bad luck with "circle time" and related activities....Well, he still doesn't like sitting in the circle, so he sat in a chair next to me at the edge, but generally did OK. He warmed up to the group time and seemed interested in the projects and the topic. All was going, relatively well until the last story when he spotted a random car toy you could ride in. He sort of melted when I wouldn't let him ride the car and tried to get him to stick with the group. It happens, and I handled it as best I could. It was particularly tricky as he wanted to be picked up, but I was wearing M so not really possible.

We went to the Zoo playground for awhile after the class and were very happy by the time we headed home. It was a really good morning. I even got to chat a bit with several other Moms which I enjoyed and M slept peacefully the entire time in her Bjorn. I think we'll go again in November for "Little Bunny Foo Foo" if you can imagine.....