Day 35

So today's planned topic was the desert. We talked about what a desert is, what animals live there, how they save water and stay cool, and where we find these deserts - particularly the Southwestern U.S., Africa, and Australia. Amid my research, I found in African culture some people play the big snake game and call it Banyoka. So, we had some Banyoka time before animal presentation this morning. We headed to the pavillion, where we weaved around tables and columns. The kids actually had a lot of fun with it. Then, we visited the red pandas before heading back in.

The animal presenter brought the bearded dragon from the deserts of Australia today... perfect! She also brought an Eastern Screech owl for us to see.

The original plan was to visit the African Boardwalk after the animal presentation and feed the giraffes, but it was hello rain instead. So, our little rainforest is indoors, so we toured the rainforest on desert day. haha We'll learn more about the rainforest on Thursday. As you know, the Discovery Center is one of my favorite parts of the zoo. We split into our little groups again to keep track of everyone. Here was my group - Bella, Jack, Greyson, Corley, Oliver, and Sam.

For today's language lesson, we practiced some Australian slang. It was Ripper! For those of you without a little Aussie inside, I just said, "It was terrific!" :-) We also took a group picture today.

Then, for our individual pictures this week, we had them do silly faces or fun poses. Turns out we have three... count them.... three sets of twins this week. I'm posting the individual photos of the twins below, so you can see some of our funny faces.

Nate and Matt:

Henry and Jack:
(Fun side note: Henry has a prosthetic left eye.)

Cayleigh and Cassidy:

For a hands on project today, we made little passports for our World Travelers week. We did the cover and the first two pages. We'll work on an additional page each day. Here's the cover and first two pages from mine:

I walked the kids through spelling the word "passport" for the front, and the names of the habitats on the inside. Then, we have a picture representing each habitat. The giraffe is actually a stamp we borrowed from admissions, but I think we will be handrawing the rest of the pictures.

With our full day campers today, we made a fun speed walk to the dinosaur exhibit as it started to rain. We were inside when it was pouring the hardest. Haha, but fun fun. Here's Ricky, Averee, and I after our super fast walk to the dinosaurs:
(Oliver took the photo for me.)

Then, I got a few of the boys to do some fun photos with me, and they took turns taking photos with my camera.

Also, before it started raining again this afternoon, we spent some dry time outside in the cool air. Samantha had her monkey along with her today, so I babysat him while she played. She looks adorable with him.

We finished up the day by making some snake shaker musical instruments. There's rice inside them. This is mine:

Then, I checked my watch and thought it said 3:40, so we started to read a story... then, we got a radio call asking where we were because it was 3:57. "What do you mean it's 3:57? My watch says 3:40." Well, turns out I accidentally changed modes, and I think it was on stopwatch. hahaha. We were just having too much fun I guess. :-)

Then, after camp, we had our training tour of the new Australia exhibit. It's not quite finished yet, but is supposed to be opening to the public on Saturday. It's a big exhibit, and it looks and sounded pretty cool from the way parts were described to us. There are emus and wallabies that are free roaming in the area, so it's important to stay on the path. I'll post more info about Australia as I visit it with the kids throughout the rest of the summer.

Yowza! One long post, but that's usually a good sign... Some days I'm just too tired to post a lot of details... Despite some rain, we had a really fun day. Desert day in the rain. :-) Great day!