Jungle Safari Theme – Crafts, Food, & More

What a fun week we had with our jungle safari theme. This was a fun way to explore new and exotic animals and where they live. Not only did we do lots of learning and playing, but we collected so many resources from around the internet to even make everything from cupcakes to fun crafts.

We pretended to be animals in the jungle, be on safari watching the animals, and made our own makeshift canopy and jungle in the living room. What a blast we had with this theme. We hope that you join us for the fun and enjoy your own jungle safari adventure!

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Jungle Safari Theme Books, Toys, and Entertainment

There are so many fun books to help make this week fun! Our favorites were some Pop-Up books put out by National Geographic. One is called Hide & Seek (our favorite because animals pop out of nowhere) and the other is Amazing Monkeys. My daughter literally spent hours going through, meticulously exploring each page for the pop ups and the different animals. They were invaluable in our week’s fun! They even went with us everywhere. While they are fragile simply because they are pop up books, they definitely have stood the test of time. Not only did we get them secondhand, but my daughter is a rowdy toddler and we still got away with lots of fun and no disaster.

We also read Roar!, Five Little Monkeys, Thumbprint Critters, and a few other books this week that had to do with our Jungle Safari theme or at least with animals that one would find can also find some great Book-based activities like these on The Parrot Tico Tango and Giraffes Can’t Dance.

This week was also a great time to pull out some fun puzzles. My daughter’s favorite, by far, is the Melissa & Doug Safari Chunky Puzzle and I personally love that it includes and ostrich.

Of course, this is also the week that if you’re a stuffed animal lover, you can pull them all out and have so much fun playing with them. While I am not a huge fan of stuffed animals myself, my daughter has a couple and she just adores them. It was fun to put them into rotation and give the animals a bit more context.

As a treat, this week my daughter got to watch some episodes of Wild Kratts. This was such a fun way to explore animals and their environment in a whole new way. We don’t do too much TV around here, but really love when we find ways to use it to supplement learning and exploration. The Kratts brothers also have some wonderful videos on YouTube from when they produced Kratts Creatures. This is a great alternative to the cartoon type of show!

Jungle and Safari Games and Activities

• Go on an adventure and make your own jungle! It does not have to be elaborate! We did it with a fitted sheet over our four dinning room chairs. You can even hang stuffed animals, print out masks, and listen to sounds of the jungle while you do it. This is such a fun way to practice those animal sounds and pretend to be your favorite animals. This was a HUGE hit in our home. For older kids, you can even talk about it being a canopy and the different layers of the rain forest.
• Make an entire zoo of animals from cardboard tubes! Red Ted Art has some amazing ideas and examples to get you started! And Teach Beside Me has an AMAZING iguana craft made completely from old toilet paper rolls!
• Pull out the paint and make cute crafts together. Thumbprint monkeys are adorable and probably one of my favorites. There are also great ideas like fork lions, and really adorable hand print art like these zebras and giraffes. It really cannot get much cuter!
• Sing a Down in the Jungle Bath Time song! This is a cute song that Let’s Play Music has provided. It includes the lyrics and a video on youtube with the instrumentals!
• East Coast Mommy has a really cute and genius idea of setting up a backyard safari for her little ones that is so simple, but so much fun!
• Learn how to do an Elephant Hand Shadow Puppet together.
• Make Zoo Peek-a-boo cards like these from Bambini Travel. This is a great activity for the younger learners, but can also easily be extended for older toddlers and preschoolers as well.
• Have some sensory fun, like this great jungle sensory bin from Kids Play Space.

Other Jungle and Safari Resources

More resources!

• Learn Create Love also did a fun learning theme that is worth your time. They explored the rain forest with many crafts and activities!
• Make Animal Cupcakes like the adorable Wild Kratts themed ones from mom Endeavors.
• Listen to the sounds of the jungle, safari, and rainforest. This would be fun to watch together! There are also several jungle noise videos on youtube that make for fun “music” while painting and playing. (Note: just listen to them first. Make sure they’re not scary!)

Bible Verse of the Week: Genesis 1:24 “And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.” We talked about all the wonderful animals God created and supplemented it with the book Explore God’s Jungle .

 

What is your favorite way to explore the jungle?