Zoo

We finally made it to the ZOO! Our playgroup has been planning this for a couple of weeks so I've had plenty of time to prepare. Leading up to this we did several activities related to animals. We read books about herbivores and carnivores, food chains, and stories about zoos. We learned about the differences between mammals, birds and reptiles. We played animal games on the computer and we watched Barney: Let's go to the Zoo.

First stop was the flamingos.

Next we watched the elephant spray themselves with water from their trunks.

We made our way through the rest of Africa seeing a rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, and lions.

I made a worksheets for the kids with pictures of animals for a zoo scavenger hunt. They colored in each of the animals as we saw them and we talked about the different classifications of animals - mammals, birds, reptiles - and compared their attributes.

We tried to take a picture of all the boys. Thomas would not participate and just hid behind the rock.

I got a better picture of Thomas as the kids climbed around in the trees pretending to be monkeys.

Then we made our way to the bird house. The boys pretended to be baby birds in their nest while Thomas hid again.

We stopped for lunch under a nice shady umbrella. The boys had a bite to eat and then continued to run around on the patio... until Thomas fell and skinned his knee.

Lunch was inturrupted when Thomas heard a train whistle. We ran over to the railroad crossing just in time to see the zoo train chug by.

After lunch we headed over to the panda exhibit where we got to see the big mama panda and a little baby panda.

The mama panda walked up right next to the glass just inches from us!

Next we visited the reptile house.

Last stop was the most exciting part of the whole day for Thomas - riding the TRAIN!

On the short train ride around the zoo we saw one more animal - a giant tourtise.

After the ride, Thomas had to inspect the engine. It looks just like the Chattanooga Choo Choo that is on his shirt and that we have spent hours learning about.

It was closing time but we let the kids play on the playground for a few minutes - until security kicked us out.