Woodland Park Zoo

We enjoyed our annual field trip to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle during their homeschool days program. The theme this year was 'mammals' throughout the day. They sponsored many different hosts throughout the zoo sharing carts to learn from, an early day room of various mammal activities with many skulls and pelts to touch, a couple of presentations on mammals, a little toddler puppet presentation, an animal observation activity and more!

We spent the entire day up at the zoo and still did not cover the whole thing. Through the years we have visited this zoo and have never once seen ever exhibit. I am okay with this though, as I rather they take their time and learn a little along the way through the reading and guides on site. Yesterday for instance we spent about an hour in the rain forest exhibit with a personal guide walking through with us and talking with Holly about all the animals as well as his own experience visiting the Amazon for a few months, his journeys, what he saw and experienced, how she might enjoy it and asked her questions along the way to keep her engaged completely -- she LOVED it!! (Later you'll see she is doing a rain forest unit this year).

A slow experience around the zoo today offered up a quality experience!!

Woodland Park Zoo

This was our first year attending the homeschool days with Woodland Park Zoo... but will now be a part of our year for years to come. We had a great time! We arrived just before opening and stayed until moments before closing time - a full day of learning, exploring, journaling and enjoyment!

Holly began in the education building where they had several hands on stations to learn about life cycles of some various animals, learned about camouflage with birds and their eggs and more. After the stations we sat in on a talk on reptiles. The zoo keeper did a great job breaking down the types of reptiles, why they are reptiles and facts about them. Then she shared a couple of critters - a boa and a skink. At the end of the talk the kids all got to touch the skink. A hit for sure!

The rest of the day we spent with friends exploring various areas, enjoying some hands on carts with more animals encounters, did an observation on penguins, a packet on bugs and a visit to the nature exchange. Of course she enjoyed some play throughout the zoo as well! The whole day was wonderful and I look forward to a future visit during their homeschool days - next year we will visit the zoo in a different order to hit the parts we missed.

Nature Exchange

This week we visited the Woodland Park Zoo during their Homeschool Days program... I'll have a post soon on that. Before visiting we had learned from a fellow homeschool friend about a program they offer called the Nature Exchange. This is a program where children can bring in items from the natural world, projects on nature or nature journals to share. When a child shares on the item they bring in they can earn points, exchange items or shop for a new item... all nature items of course! They have bins and bins, drawers and drawers of items from natures - fossils, rocks, shells, etc. Tons of stuff! The Nature Exchange also has tables of stuff to explore, books to use, items to learn on and more.

Since we learned of this we brought along Holly's nature journal and so glad we did. When we arrived to the Nature Exchange at the zoo they were not actually taking any exchanges that day rather treating it as an open house for the homeschoolers visiting. However, they came and found us because they decided to take Holly as a demonstration and training for other staff members. Holly participated in her first Nature Exchange!

She sat down with the staff and shared her nature journal. They talked to her about when she uses it, about our Nature Club friends and outings, how she journals and discussed details you can include in a journal. Then they chose a couple of specific pages to discuss in detail with her. Holly decided on her recent salmon pages, salmon habitat and turtle observation pages. They sat with her for about 30 minutes asking her questions on the art work, her observations, what she learned and they looked up more information to teach her. It was awesome!!! They pulled out some books, looked on-line and even brought over some artifacts to share with her that related to her nature journal pages. She *loved* it!

When she was done she had earned (I think) 400 points. You can spend them all or save them up for a special item you'd like to add to your collection. She opted to buy something and save some points as well. Holly chose to buy a Shark Tooth Fossil to add to her fossil collection for 150 points. They bagged it up for her and shared some stickers and a little booklet with her as well. She was in heaven and I am thrilled with the whole experience. We talked about some larger projects she could do in the future and bring in to share. The zoo is far away... but we might have to enjoy it a bit more as this is a great incentive for Holly and right up her alley for interest.

I wished I had taken more photos... but I was so involved in watching her interact with the staff, share and learn. But, I do have a couple of the area and her sharing.

Here she is sharing and deep in discussion with some of the staff.

View of part of the area.

All of these bins & drawers are filled with items to exchange.

They have fantastic displays all over like this to learn from!

Another view - items to learn on or exchange.

Giraffe skull - she loved this!

More goodies... to learn with or exchange.

Her Shark Tooth Fossil she earned!