Curriculum- Dogs

The Curriculum Ideas on our site can be incorporated into your classroom, recess, free play, etc. to teach career education in a fun, innovative, and educational way. Activities listed are for ideas only and are not appropriate for all ages and may require adult supervision. Get creative and expand these ideas in your classroom or home to make work fun for kids of all ages. When you use these ideas with our books, the books show Katy and VJ doing many of these activities in one form or another and the book also shows them using things from around their house to pretend. The beauty of most of our ideas is that you don't have to buy anything, and if you do, it is minimal. Most activities can be completed using things from around the house. Kids enjoy making these tools themselves, it does not matter what they look like, it matters that they created them and that they use them. These ideas also help you recycle if your classroom or home is going green and you will finally have a use for all those left over fast food balloons that have lost their helium or those paper towel and toilet paper rolls that quickly fill up the trashcan.

Katy and VJ Dream about Jobs with Dogs

Dog Groomer
* Find bottles and containers of various sizes to recycle into dog shampoo bottles. Let kids create a name for their dog shampoo, design a logo, and decorate the label.
* Create a blow dryer from an empty paper towel roll and a balloon and slowly let the air out of the balloon into the paper towel roll to dry a stuffed dog.
* Place a variety of combs and brushes in the dramatic play area with a bunch of stuffed dogs and let the kids use their imagination as they groom their canine companion.
* Hold a dog wash fundraiser and let the kids sell tickets to family and friends in advance. Take out the hoses, grab the shampoo, and let the fun begin. Don’t forget lots of towels, brushes, and cute ribbons for the finishing touch.
* Discuss different breeds of dogs and compare and contrast their coats. Ask the children if the dogs’s coat is curly or straight? Long or short? Soft or coarse?
* Take a field trip to a local dog grooming salon, learn about the tools, and watch the process in action.
Animal Patrol Officer
* Make ID tags for stuffed animals in your classroom. Addresses on the ID tags can be colors, shapes, letters, numbers, addresses, etc. Place card board boxes (houses) around the room with matching symbols (address). After you affix the ID tags to the stuffed animals, give each child one and ask them to find where the animal lives or for older children, place all the animals in a pile and time them to see who can return all the animals to the correct home the fastest.
* Invite an Animal Patrol Officer to class to talk about animal health and safety and why you should never approach animals you do not know, even if they look nice.
* Let children make their own ID tags with their name, address, and phone number for their backpacks.
Website Administrator
* Visit a website like PetFinder.com and let children search for a dog they would like to adopt. Talk about why they chose that dog.
* Get small pizza boxes from your local pizza place and let the children make their own laptop computers with keyboards starting with QWE on the left or simply ABC. Let them practice letter recognition, typing, or spelling.
* Let children create their own webpage layout on paper for a dog in need of adoption. Have them draw a picture, name it, describe it, and create a catchy ad to help it get adopted.
Pet Pastry Chef
* Use playdough to let the children make dog treats for their stuffed animals.
* Buy a variety of dog treats at the store and bring them in. Let children read the labels and compare the ingredients to their favorite cookie label. Talk about why dogs can’t eat certain things like chocolate and why they need special foods to stay strong and healthy.
* Look up real dog treat recipes online and make some in class. Many recipes can be eaten by children and by dogs.
* Make real dog treats, hold a dog treat bake sale for a fundraiser instead of a cookie or lemonade stand. Let the children name their treats, list the ingrediants, design a logo, and package them. Older children can even add up the cost of the ingredients and determine the unit cost of each item, price their items, and determine % profit.
* Take a field trip to a local dog bakery and see how they make real treats.
K-9 Officer
* Invite a real K-9 Officer to class to talk about the work they do.
* Go online and look up K-9 Dog commands and teach the children how to say the commands in English and German. They can take turns being the K-9 Officer and the Dog and work in pairs to practice their commands.
* Make Police officer badges and give the children stuffed dogs to put on the back of their bikes . Let them patrol the playground with their new sidekick.
Doggie Clothes Designer
* Use foam, cardboard, fabric, etc. to make a t-shirt shaped cut out. Let children decorate it as they choose. Punch holes at the top and tie it to the neck of their favorite stuffed pal or punch holes all the way around to let them practice their lacing before tying it on.
* Give children a dog on white paper to decorate and or draw clothes on. You can ask them to dress it for a special event, holiday, type of weather, etc. or let them use their imaginations.
* Go to the fabric store or an upholstery store and ask for scraps or fabric samples and let children learn about texture, patterns, colors, and types of fabrics as they go through them. Allow them to compare and contrast things like dark and light, heavy and light, soft and coarse, stripped and plaid, silky and bumpy, etc.
* Take a trip to a dog boutique or ask if you can borrow some items to bring in and show the kids so they can see all the cute things dogs can be dressed in. You can also use the internet to find funny pictures of dogs dressed in things like Dorothy from the wizard of oz to a baseball player. Ask them to go home and make something to dress a stuffed animal in and bring it tomorrow for show and tell.
* Go online and find a documentary about how fabric is made.
* Bring in a real sewing machine and demonstrate how to sew and allow older children to practice sewing lines on scrap fabric.

More Coming Soon.