I've been meaning to post these pictures from our zoo outing last week...
In the sweltering heat, this was the coolest thing at the zoo, for Ben, as it turned out. Because he wouldn't stop talking about it after we got home!
And cool down, we did some...
....like this sea lion going for a dip in the pool...
and this hippo...
headed for the watering hole!
But it was the animals I had brought the boys to the zoo to see, and there were some neat exbihits here....
and there...
Jon took this super close close-up of Ben and me, and I think he succeeded in making us look as big as possible!
And of course, we did get pretty up-close and personal with some of the live ones, too! Like...
Ernie the bearded dragon...
and DJ the giraffe.
If I'd leaned any closer, I think I could have touched it, if not, fallen into the enclosure! Yes, that was how very near we came to it!
Monkey see, monkey do...
Hey, baboon... say "cheese"!
The boys also got to groom the goats a bit... brush, brush, brush!
Brush some more!
And if you asked Jon, he'd tell you the reptiles were the coolest of them all! And that was what had brought us to the zoo in the first place. To try and catch the blue-tongued skink at the children's section -- a smaller zoo by itself, that back in winter Ben and I, during our first visit there, got to see and pat.
There was no public appearance from any skinks this time round, though. But skink or no skink, we now have a rubber snake from the Dollar Shop, that Jon used one star from his reward chart to get. I matched it with a canister from the same store, to leave the snake to soak in. After four days, it would have grown 600 times!
These pictures were taken on Day 2, and that was
only half almost as big as the snake could get.
This rubber version is the closest to a snake I can live with, for a pet (?!). But it's the very thing Jon's been asking for, after an older schoolmate showed the first grade class his pet corn snake just before school closed.
Needless to say, it's got both Jon and Ben squealing and squirming, shrieking and screaming like it were the real thing! How's that for some cheap thrill?
What we did with the pictures
Jon still has to be coaxed a great deal to read and write, because his command of sight words isn't all there yet. I try and not be overly worried about how his classmates have reached this milestone already because he is the youngest among them. So now and then, I try and make it look like fun, because it can be fun!
The day after our zoo outing, I asked Jon to choose which pictures he liked for printing out, and then we sat down to work on a poster. He needed more help than I think should be given by now, but it's alright, this wasn't some school project to be worked on independently. And I guess sometimes we just need more help before we learn to move on by ourselves.
A bit of rhyme there, too, just to jazz up the writing. Jon also had some good ideas of his own, like thinking up new words to write when he made a spelling error in what he'd wanted to say at first. Soon, he also got the hang of adding pictures to liven up the piece, if not, for covering up spelling mistakes.
On his own, Jon also drew a blob over the the words "their food whole", for the komodo dragon to swallow.
This was as far as he got, and good effort on his part, before he scooted off to watch something on TV like I promised he could once done. I also rewarded him five balls i.e. one star, for having plowed through all this.
To finish up, I stuck the pictures down fast with glue, after adding the whirring effect to the fan, to bring across the "cool" connection slightly better. This is the end product, and yes, the poster's up on our wall!
More Zoo... at home!
Besides 'growing' our own snake, playdough time also saw a 'rattlesnake'. I hadn't set out to do an animal theme, but there was a playdough book we'd borrowed from the library that gave us just what we needed.
To make the rattlesnake, just stick a pipe-cleaner into a straw to be the frame of the snake, and trim the straw shorter if you like. Then pour some sprinkles into the bent end of the straw, to be the tail (that you can shake-shake afterwards like a rattle), before covering up the whole snake with playdough.
It could be because we used our own homemade playdough, it broke apart very soon. Right after it tried to gobble up Jon's blue guy (oops, I forgot what's his name), that was made with store-bought playdough (and hence, tougher?)!
For laughs, Ben was also going around with his handpuppet in one hand, and winter glove in the other, asking me if I wanted to stroke some bug! And no, I didn't ask him or the insect to bug off!
It caught on with Jon, too, who went on to try and put a rubber band around the rhinocerous beetle, the way he saw it done to crab claws in the Asian supermarket the other day.
The things our kids pay attention to, that we sometimes think won't sink in. But what do you know? We did bring back home parts of the zoo! =)
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