Day 16

Great day to be at the zoo today. Not rainy... but not insanely hot either. Today was fossil day. When the parents checked their campers in this morning, I think I might have surprised them all by remembering every name. To start, we went around the room and practiced names today. Everyone said their name and when their birthday was. We reviewed what we learned yesterday, including going through our song about the time periods.

Then, we learned about fossils - what they are, where we find them, and what paleontologists are. After the lesson, we played a game that we called Dino's in the Tarpit. It's pretty much like Stuck in the Mud, but we crawled around on our knees. The kids were having fun with it.

Snack time next - animal crackers were on the menu this morning. Then, an animal presenter came today with a corn snake and an ornate box turtle, both creatures that I am pretty familiar with. We had a corn snake back at Morningside College, and I actually participated in some research monitoring ornate box turtles at the Olsen Nature Preserve back by Petersburg, NE while I was in high school.

Time for a tour of Africa! At the zoo, there is an area known as the African Boardwalk. We tied this tour into today's lesson because there have been a lot of fossils found in Africa. The animals that live in our Africa at the Blank Park Zoo include servals, ostriches, giraffes, cranes, kudus, and guinea fowl. Alora, one of our campers, told us that the serval is her favorite animal. Here she is standing by the serval cage.

Also, while we were standing by the giraffes, one of the boys said one thing that I remember and had to take a photo in memory of it. Cole, a somewhat ornrey, but fun and loveable boy, was carrying around his umbrella and said "Hey giraffe, if it starts to rain you can use my umbrella".

We actually let the kids participate in a zoo activity today - giraffe feeding, which they are we're really excited about. This activity occurs at three specified times throughout the day at the zoo for visitors 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00. Each child got to walk up, hold a piece of lettuce, and the giraffe stuck out its long purple tongue to grab the lettuce. The first picture is of them patiently waiting in line. Daniela actually started up some "heads, shoulders, knees, and toes" while we waited, which was fun. The second photo shows some of the boys right up there feeding the giraffe.

After Africa, we went through the dino exhibit again at the kids' request. We had all 24 kids today, so we took a group photo of them in front of some of the dinosaurs.

We worked on our activity memory books for a bit next before heading to lunch. Then, craft time! Today was sand in a bottle, since we know that there are different layers in the ground where we find fossils.

After our half- day campers checked out, we played some games, went back to Africa to learn more about the animals, had ice cream sandwiches for afternoon snack, and spent some time at the Kids' Kingdom playground while it was sunny out. The kids had a lot of fun there. There's this cool fossil area sandbox, where the boys kept saying "look I found a fossil", and I would reply "That's right, you guys are great paleontologists".

Also, this afternoon Mason, one of our campers, asked me if I'm married. hahaha Finished up the day by doing a little craft project - fossils in clay. We just took some seashells to make imprints in clay, but they still enjoyed it. Another good day, but my feet hurt today. I knew the whole standing up pretty much all day long would start to catch up with me. Totally worth it though :-)