Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Room Two was excited about our trip to Auckland Zoo. For our 'Poem of the Week' last week we learnt the song 'Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo' by Peter, Paul and Mary (although we changed some of the words...can you hear which?). Play the video below to hear some of us singing!

Melody took the role of director (you'll hear her calling 'Hit it!' at the beginning of the video) and John Paul helped as choreographer with the cool walking move in time to the beat for 'We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo.' Don't the tamariki in our class have such sweet singing voices? We'll have to put more videos up for you in the future.

Our day at the zoo started with the bus ride to Point Chevalier and the children had fun singing 'The Wheels on the Bus' and were getting super excited. When we got to the zoo we had morning tea and waited for a zoo educator to take us on our 'Zoofari' experience.

 

Our educator was Sue. She took us to see some exotic animals (animals that are not native to New Zealand). First she sat us down and told us she would be taking us to the Australian Walkabout where we would see different animals - including emus. Here Sue is showing us an emu egg:

In the Australian Walkabout Sue talked to us about the wallabies and told us not to get too close to the emu. We were good at following her instructions and staying on the path.

Next, Sue took us into the Australian aviary to see some very colourful and interesting birds. Here are Rafa and his dad looking at a rainbow lorikeet. One of the birds flew so close to us - brushing past Miss McKenna's hair as it flew from one side of the enclosure to the other!

After the aviary we saw the brolga. Sue said these birds like to dance but, unfortunately, we didn't see any dancing while we were there. We liked looking at the birds and watching them though.

We also really liked looking at our maps and finding where we were and where we wanted to go! (All children have a map in class which they will be able to bring home later in the term to keep as a souvenir.)

After our tour we split into smaller groups for an hour and explored the zoo with our parent helpers/teachers. This meant that we got to go to the enclosures we most wanted to see. Miss McKenna's group went through the meerkat tunnels - which was a bit squishy for Miss McKenna (!) but exciting to crawl through and we all had lots of fun!

After that we walked through the bones (well, fake ones) of a whale (!) to get to the seal enclosure. We saw the seals from above the water...and then went below.

  

We loved watching the fur seals and sea lions from the lower level. They came so close to the glass it made some of us jump back! Here is a video we took of the sea lions and fur seals and a photo of our whole small group together with Miss Aspeling's group:

As we had seen exotic animals in the morning we went to see some more native animals before stopping for lunch by the elephants. Some of them were hard to spot but we were good at looking and finding them. Our observation skills are pretty good and we were curious to see all the animals.

Just before lunch we headed to see the hippopotamuses which turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of the day. I think you'll know why after reading Keanu and John Paul's stories:

"My whole school went to the zoo!!!!!!! The big hippo pooed. It smelled gross." By Keanu

"My whole school went to the zoo and we saw a hippo. He was pooing when he was sitting down in the mud." By John Paul

After the hippos we saw the flamingo and had a go ourselves at standing on one leg just like them - we are good at balancing and could do it pretty easily!  

The next stop was lunch and we were lucky that the elephants came right out on show while we were there. We even saw some 'elephant yoga'! (One of the trainers was making the elephant do some stretches.)

When an announcement that we could see the baboons being fed came over the loudspeaker we walked to see them and - wow - we saw big ones, baby ones, mummy ones, daddy ones...all sorts of baboons (about eleven of them) right there in front of us.

Our trip to the zoo was a great experience and since being back at school we have enjoyed drawing and writing about our experience. We have also spent time in our Tuesday and Thursday station rotations doing more animal-themed learning. We have done some animal drama, started some tiger paintings with Mrs Driver and even painted some animal faces with Miss T. Check out some of us with our faces painted here. Some Miss T. painted...and some we did ourselves!

If you want to find out more about our trip to the zoo ask us and/or come into our classroom to see our fantastic pictures and read the rest of our stories about our trip which Miss McKenna has just hung up!