Crafty Spices - Not just a stuffed animal! #learning time

Even though Little G would be our mascot, here at our house we love to explore and learn together at every opportunity we have, animals are no exception to this rule, so before we make everything official. Kira and I agreed to do a little bit of research about giraffes. For us it is so interesting and fulfilling to team up with our child in order to reach a goal.

Here are a few of the things that we discovered together:

Giraffe means: "fast-walker".
Giraffes are the tallest land animals and the largest ruminant, they run as fast as 35 mph over short distances, and eat hundreds of pounds of leaves from the treetops each week.
They can go up to 3 full days without water and their life span is 25 years
Male Giraffes weigh between 2,400 and 3,000 pounds while female Giraffes weigh between 1,600 and 2,600 ponds.
Male Giraffes also are taller than females they can grow up to 19 feet tall while females only up to 16 feet tall.
They are mostly found in central, eastern and southern Africa.

Now that we know a little about Giraffes, we are more convinced that they are very interesting and lovely animals, a real one would be way to much work and a bit to much for our apartment, but we are very happy to welcome little "G" to our Crafty Spices Family. Please welcome her...

Meet Little "G"!

You will be hearing more about little G and her adventures very soon.

A real Giraffe.

Kira just finished putting sneakers to little G.

Educational Facts & Tips:

Taking a child's favorite stuff animal (what many would call a "non educational toy"), or a new animal toy and making it an educational moment is an easy and fun way to teach your child about that animal or even other animal friends.
Have the little ones help in the research, the extend is going to vary by age. ** Don't do all the work ** . I just described how Kira whom is 3 years old did her part. While she can't actually take the computer and Google "Giraffe" on her own, or go to the library by herself, we did both things together and she enjoys feeling helpful. Not only did she get to learn about giraffes but there are also some implicit lessons in this research:
- They starts learning that not all is handed to us, and that sometimes (or most of the times) we have to do the leg-work to get the results we want.
- Get to practice computer skills.
- Get to practice reading skills
- Learn about team work (you do this and I do that, or I can help you with this or that)
Little ones regardless of the age can "draw" a picture of the animal.
Talk about the colors of the animal, or the different types of colors it can be.
What they eat, maybe the child eats some of the same things the animal eats. Is that specific animal a Carnivores, Herbivores or Omnivores. If the child does not know what are these terms take the opportunity to introduce the terms and define each one.
Look for a map and show them the location where that animal is most known to exist (if they are older have them show you).
One animal can lead to another, you don't have to limit yourself to the stuff animal that they have or go out to buy one, find a relationship with other animals and go on from there, there are million possibilities (family animals, color similarities, by eating classification, etc).