Nature's Buddies Spring Session #3

Yesterday was our last spring class at the zoo. The theme for the day was shelter. It was interesting to see how this session was different from the session about shelter during the winter. During the winter we talked a lot about food and how animals need shelter to store food and how they need room to find food or hide from predators. This session was way more simple and focused on what animals use as shelter.

Our first activity was to create our own shelter. Each child was given 6 floor mat pieces and told to find space to create a shelter. The Children's Museum has the same materials and Carter always enjoys creating houses there. Jeremy and I helped him create a cube to sit inside and then I just laid one piece on top for him to lift up and peek out of. He had a blast popping out of his home. The teacher asked what kind of animal he was and he responded with "meerkat!" When it was time to take the house apart, we let Carter knock the house down and he loved it!

Our little meerkat peeking out of his shelter.

From there we went out to the nature trail to walk and look for animal homes. Our teacher had placed different things along the trail for children to find and there were also natural items already along the trail.  We found many different turtle shells, nests, and even found cracked open turtle eggs. We looked at the tent caterpillars and their tent in the tree again. Carter searched through a log to find bugs and we even saw a goose on the other side of the pond sitting on her nest.

Checking out a turtle shell while hunting for animal homes.

At the end of our session we got to meet an animal. This time it was a snake. When the teacher asked what the animal was Carter yelled out "Nake!" Then he looked at me and said, "Mommy scared!" Even though he was a little hesitant, he decided to touch the snake. Although he did it extremely briefly and using only one finger.

Overall I was very impressed with the spring session of the classes. It's a newer program and they are still figuring it out. The teacher talked to parents during the winter session and got feedback on how to improve the classes. I was glad they offered more classes and broke the children down into smaller age ranges. Carter's class was only an hour rather than the hour and a half of the winter session which was better for him as he was less tired toward the end and paid more attention. They also started the class earlier which was nice because he had time to walk around the zoo a little bit after class. They will offer another session during the summer and I haven't decided whether we'll sign up for that one or not, but I do know we will do the classes again in the future.

Walking the zoo after class with Uncie J.