If you plan to take your students to the zoo -- plan ahead and make the most of the trip. A trip to the zoo can be a educational field to be harvested!
Fall is a favorite time to visit the zoo because cooler temperatures mean more animals will be out of their dens and shelters and enjoying the sunshine and cool breezes too. Prepare children for a day at the zoo by making a zoo treasure hunt.
What is at the zoo to see?
A group of children at the zoo may well miss the best sights if they are busy socializing on the playground or hanging out at the food barn sipping sodas. With a zoo treasure hunt, the children will likely encounter something new and become interested in parts of the zoo they have never been in before.
A Zoo Idea Chart:
Make a chart before going to the zoo. The kids in your classroom or family can all brainstorm about the zoo. What do they expect to see? Write these on a big poster board. Keep this ongoing to raise awareness and to get the children into the zoo trip mode. They should read each other’s additions and may be inspired by those.
Study Animals:
Study a few of the lesser known animals as a group project or assign each child an animal to learn and report about to the whole class. Try featuring an animal a day until zoo day. Remember to include bugs, fish, birds, and rodents.
What does the teacher know about at the zoo that many of the children may have skipped or missed before? What animals do the children wish to see? What birds? What mammals? What invertebrates? What displays and special exhibits are available at the zoo you will visit?
Zoo Map:
Obtain or make a map of the zoo. This should be as large as possible and include exits, gift shop, snack shack, places to meet if lost, etc. This map can be decorated with stickers of animals or drawings by the students colored and cut and pasted unto the poster. Knowing how the zoo is laid out will help parents, teachers and students to enjoy zoo trip more.
Zoo Attractions Lists:
Shortly before the zoo trip, the teacher should make up a list of ten or fifteen attractions which the students should be certain to see and check off on their lists as they find each. The teacher may pass these out on the way to the zoo and then hold onto them after the kids have looked them over.
Show them again at lunch and on the trip home to be marked then. This will help the kids know what to look for and also lead to later discussions of what they did observe.
- How many saw the baby bear?
- How many saw a roadrunner in the dessert building?
- What African dog was at the zoo?
- Did anyone see a gnu?
- How many elephants were there?
- What kind were the elephants?
- Who saw a flamingo?
List Ideas:
Here are some more list ideas. Make some of them numbers and some of them mysteries, some non-living things
- A buffalo
- Rhinoceros
- A snow leopard
- Albino animal
- A snake that is a constrictor
- Green three-toed tree toad
- A prairie dog
- Bird with a yellow or orange beak
- White monkey swinging by his tail
- An animal that carries its baby in a pouch
- Five species of birds, six baby animals
- A goldfish over ten inches long? A lizard
- A gray furred animal
- Blue butterfly
- A feeding station
- Parrot
- an attendant inspecting an animal
- Lion cubs
- A sea lion
- Kangaroo
- Wild African dog
- Alligator
- Baby giraffe
In the petting zoo: A goat, a lamb, a horse, a burro, chickens, a duck, a cow
The treasure hunt is a before, during, and after trip project to reinforce that learning and make a trip to the zoo a greater benefit to all.
Hey, was that a moose?
