Zoo School

This past Thursday the boys and I went to what we call "Zoo School." On the third Thursday of each month (except for the summer months due to camps) there is a class offered for preschool kids in the Education Center at the zoo where they get to learn about a certain animal. This month it was all about monkeys. I don't know how I had never heard of this before - I guess I'm out of the loop somehow - but I was very glad to learn about it on Amy's blog. I wish I'd known about the class in April because the boys would have loved to learn about turtles. Oh well.

Here are the boys outside of the Education Center. The classrooms have these huge windows on one wall that overlook Nelson Lake. The boys watched the ducks outside while we waited for the class to start.

This is one of the zookeepers, Ms. Joy, reading a book about monkeys and apes.

The boys got to use markers and googly eyes to decorate their own wooden cut-out monkeys.

Benjamin liked the black spider monkeys in the book Joy read and Nathan liked the orange faced monkeys so that's how they colored their monkeys.

Once everyone had completed their monkey masterpieces the kids got to sing the "Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed" song and jump around with them.

There was just too much fun energetic jumping going on not to catch a little of it on video.

After singing and jumping we all made our way to the spider monkey's cage to learn more about them. We saw that they do not have thumbs, their tail has skin on the end of it to help grip like another finger, and they love to munch on the bamboo outside their cage. We went back in the area behind the gate to listen to Joy without being in the other zoo visitors' way.

We stopped and looked at the wetlands exhibit on our way out.

We also played on the rocks since we didn't get to do that yet either.