When a child shows interest in a specific animal, it’s a great opportunity for learning. Why not encourage a love of wombats? Those chubby balls of fluff are adorable (just like this free wombat mask)!
Here’s how you can extend on your child’s interest in wombats.
Read wombat books
Be sure to borrow some books from the library and display them around your playroom or centre. Don’t forget to borrow both fiction and non-fiction!
A list of some great wombat books:
- Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French
- Found you, Wombat by Vicki Churchill
- Wombat Down Below! by Jill Morris
- The Wombat Who Talked To The Stars by Jill Morris
- The Wombat: Common Wombats in Australia by Barbara Triggs
Understanding that wombats are marsupials
Learning about how a wombat has babies can be complex for little ones.
Wombats are marsupials, and that means that they give birth to under-developed babies, called joeys. The young wombat must climb into its mother’s pouch and drink plenty of milk where it becomes fully developed.
If your child doesn’t know much about different types of animals yet, I’d suggest you learn a little bit about basic body coverings first. Here’s a great activity that gets your children learning the basics of animal classification in a fun and interactive way.
Once your child understands these basic classification concepts you can teach them about different types of mammals, like marsupials. This is a great youtube video about Marsupials. They’re truly fascinating.
Free Wombat Mask
Grab this free wombat mask and use it as part of your play.
Click here to download the wombat mask.
Wombat Play
I’d highly recommend pairing your wombat masks with some wombat play. Build wombat burrows in your playroom and pretend to dig – womble about just like a wombat would!
I think pretending to be a wombat was the best fun of all.
The wombat mask is amazing! It’s also great for me that you included the clip and explanation about the kangaroo birth. My eldest is semi-obsessed with Bondi Vet at the moment but I stopped her viewing some of the operation or birth scenes because I thought it might give her nightmares. But she is so fascinated by animal development – I’m thinking that its just a matter of finding the right material for her to learn and feel comfortable about.
Thanks Beautiful Kirri! Yep, I think you do have to be careful with what you share. You don’t want to seriously freak them out!
Thank you for those clips Penny. Can’t wait to show my boys tomorrow. They’ll be fascinated. That last photo of you and Miss Possum is so lovely. xoxo P
I hope they don’t freak out Pauline. Miss Possum seems to be quite mature about animal functions lol. I’m surprised when she even giggles about the word poo!
Adorable masks!
I just love all of your ideas and that photo of your daughter in her burrow is adorable!