The Tiger Who Came to Tea

We are fortunate enough to live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia! Even better we live 10 minutes down the road from Australia Zoo so each year we buy a family pass and spend hour upon hour at the zoo. Considering the number of hours we spend there, the boys and I still manage to find new and exciting things to discover on each visit. Today was a special visit as Bindi was performing, and we spent lots of time looking at the Tigers after their feeding session. Our trip home was full of lots of exciting chatter from Master 2 and Master 4 about the Tigers, where they come from, what they eat, why they have stripes etc. Master 4 and I decided to look through our book shelf and find one of our favourite books, The Tiger Who Came For Tea.
It is about a little girl named Sophie who is having tea with her mother in their kitchen. Soon they are joined for tea by a tiger who drinks all the tea, eats all the food in the house and drinks everything, even draining the water from the taps, so that Sophie cannot have her bath. Then he leaves. Sophie's father comes home and suggests that they all go out and have a lovely meal in a cafe. The following day Sophie and her mother go out to buy some more food, including a big tin of tiger food. But the tiger never returns. Master 4 quickly decided that he would like to make a tiger using a paper plate!

You will need:
Large paper plate

Orange and black paint

Orange and black card or craft foam.

Black pipe cleaners

Glue

Thin elastic

Instructions:

Paint the back of the paper plate orange and leave to dry. Only when completely dry, paint on some black stripes - you'll need patience! (We baked Tiger Muffins in this time) For younger children you may want to pre-paint the orange paint. When the paint is dry cut out your eye holes. Twist together 3 pipe cleaners in the middle. Glue these to the centre of the mask.
Cut out a black nose from foam or card and glue this on top of the middle of the pipe cleaners.
Cut out 2 ears from orange foam or card. Glue these to the top of the face.
Make a small hole in either side of the face. Tie a piece of elastic through to hold your mask on.

The Zoo (A good poem to use with body movements and to begin discussions about animals)

At the zoo we saw a bear He had long, dark fuzzy hair (pretend to walk etc. like a bear)
We saw a lion in a cage. He was in an awful rage. (pretend to be an angry lion)
We saw the big, long-necked giraffe, And the silly monkeys made us laugh (everybody laugh)
But my favourite animal at the zoo Is the elephant-how about you?

While we were waiting for the orange paint to dry Master 4 and I made some cupcakes, which he happily decorated using icing pens to look like tigers!