Sophia's Zoo Trip

I went with Sophia and her preschool class on their field trip to the Watertown zoo.

We love that zoo because it's so kid-friendly. I don't have many pictures of animals because 1) I prefer taking and remembering pictures of people and 2) the girls' favorite parts of the zoo were these crazy photo op things. They went nuts over every one we found and we spent twenty minutes at every board taking different pictures of their heads poking out of different holes in different ways. You can thank me later for only posting a few!!!

When I was working at HeadStart a few years ago, I was working with a very wise teacher. During a particularly messy project, I was joking with her about letting the kids make a mess at school but I would never let my kids do it at home because I wouldn't want to have to clean it up. She laughed with me and then made a comment that's stuck with me for years.

She simply said, "It's not about the project. It's all about the process."

That thought came in helpful yet again while I was at the zoo. We had a certain amount of time and a lot of animals to see. There were times that the kids were having fun playing at an area that didn't even involve animals, I would let them play for a while and then found myself thinking that we needed to keep moving to get to the rest of the zoo. Then I would stop and remind myself that it was about the process.......having fun, interacting and learning.........not the end result of making sure they saw the entire zoo.

So we spent lots of time at the photo op boards and playing in a giant nest. At the nest, the girls took turns pretending that they were baby birds and brought food to each other. It was really fun to watch!

The other favorite for the kids was a hole in the dirt. Not kidding. We spent good money to see the animals in the zoo and guess what they loved? Again reminding myself that it's all about the process, when they stopped at the hole, instead of encouraging them to keep walking because we had more animals to see, I stopped too. We examined the hole, talked about it and yes, they even dug in the dirt. The dirt hole kept their attention for at least twenty minutes.

The funny thing is, we did actually get to see all the animals at the zoo.

But instead of the girls remembering a fieldtrip where they were hot and tired and had to be drug around and nagged for the day, they will remember having a blast at the zoo!

 

 

 

The Hole :-)

The Nest :-)