Teachable Tuesdays: Learning at the Zoo!!!!

Mr. Mouse staring down a lizard guy. ICK!!!


A couple weeks ago the Hubster was off an extra day, so we took full advantage and traveled around a bit. On Tuesday we visited our local zoo. We always have a good time there. We're members, so we frequent quite often. Tuesday was a little chilly, but beautiful!! We were able to see the NEW Sea Lion exhibit in full swing! We saw a little bit of a show, which was really them training. Our Sea Lions have been visiting the Oklahoma City Zoo for the last year or more while they re-did our exhibit. We used to just have a plain-jane water area with a small overlook. Nothing to write home about that's for sure!

But now...well, you'll just have to trust me because I forgot our camera! Bad blogger!!! I promise I'll take some next time we go and share them with you all. It really is quite neat. We even have an underwater cave you can go into and see them swimming around. Very fun!!!!

These are the few pictures I have from our last visit.

A new set of piglets just born a couple weeks ago.

Aren’t they so cute?!

My middles staring at the illusive Black Bears. They kept growling at them. So. Darn. Cute!!

And this goat!! He was cracking me up! He’s in our petting zoo area and he was just sitting on this stump. Then, I noticed his eyes were closed and simply thought he was soaking up the sun rays. And all of a sudden, his head starts falling slowly, lower and lower and lower…until it completely fell and he jerked it back up again! You know…the sleeping head nod, jerk back up in hopes that no one saw you move?! YEP!! He totally did it! I was laughing hysterically! It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Oh so funny!!

When we decided to Homeschool our kids a few years back, I began thinking about all the field trips we could take. I loved going on field trips in Elementary School and I wanted my kids to have the same experiences…only better!

So, one thing we did was become members of our local zoo so we could go whenever we wanted. It has been so much fun over the past few years to visit and see all the changes.

But, there’s really only so much you can do at a zoo that you’ve visited 15,000 times. How do you keep from getting bored? How can you make the trip even more educational?

I began doing some online searches and found that some of the larger, more well-known zoo’s have links on their sites for kids. You can print off games, puzzles, word searches, etc. But our zoo didn’t have anything like that, so I set out to create my own “Zoo Games” file.

Here are some of the things I came up with…

Word Search 
(I made it in WORD, so I can change it easily if I want!)

BINGO (two ways):

Picture Bingo for my Littles
Word/CharacteristicBingo for my reader

Fill-in info sheets

“Can You Find Me?” sheets 
(zoom in on animals you’ve taken pictures of previously to see if they can spot them again!)

Older Kids download            PreKdownload

“What Am I?” 
(give clues to help them find animals)

Matching sheets 
(where you match animals to their homes/habitat)

Click on the links above to download a free version of each. Feel free to use them in your own trip to the zoo or just as a supplement to your homeschooling journey! You are also welcome to change the Word Documents to fit your own Zoo experience. I change mine often to increase our knowledge of new animals!

Happy Schooling!!

Blessings,

Annette


Linking up with these GREAT parties today!
What Joy is Mine, An Original Belle, Teaching What Is Good, Growing Home, Far Above Rubies, Raising Mighty Arrows, Holy Spirit Led Homeschooling