Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia

Does your child love pet animals? Even if your child doesn’t have their own, pets can be a great focus for activities that develop literacy and numeracy skills! Here are a few ideas:

• find out about a pet that they are interested in
  
  Grandad has a new guinea pig. Let's borrow some books so you can find out what food they like, what care they need, and where they come from.
• compare a particular pet's food with human food
  
  What are the ingredients in tinned cat food? Would cat food be healthy for you to eat? Would our food be healthy for cats?
• collect data about your pet
  
  Let's make a daily chart for the new puppy. You can record how much she eats, how much she exercises, and how many times she needs to ‘go outside’.
• make a chart of the jobs involved in taking care of your pet, and who does them. Who does the most work?
• keep a pet diary 
  
  How about you make a photo diary for Rover, so we can see how he changes as he grows.
• play ‘What Pet am I?’ guessing games. To keep things interesting, throw in an unusual (or crazy!) pet sometimes, such as an axolotl or a lion cub!

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