Challenge your kids to write a zoo observation form at the zoo

This past week we drove up to Waco to visit the zoo.  We’re about halfway through our Land Animals book and I wanted to give them a chance to see some of the animals we’ve studied and put our learning to good use for a hands-on science lesson Because the kids and I enjoyed my animal report form, I created a similar one: zoo animal observations form.

(There are affiliate links in here somewhere)

Animal Observation at the Zoo Assignment

The assignment: fill out your zoo animal observations form (in the subscriber library, join my newsletter) at some point during the day.  For this trip, because the zoo was super crowded, I did not require the scientific name or worry about the correct spellings of the animal.

I was quite amused at the animals they chose for their reports.  Batman chose the otters and happily sat at the top of a slide for 10 minutes drawing and writing with his zoo animal observation form on his clipboard (Future Ticia, I found this particular clipboard later and love that it stores their colored pencils to use for this project).  He wrote: Otters live in woods.  They eat fish.

Superman went in with a plan and waited until he found the giraffes.  It’s his favorite land animal, and he very carefully drew the giraffe and was intrigued by how it reached over the fence to eat a shrub on the other side.  Superman wrote: It has spots.  It has a long neck for eating plants.  It has long legs.

You can tell Superman took more time in his writing and observation of the giraffe.  Partially because it’s an animal he really loves, and partially because he had a better view of it to observe.

Princess, on the other hand, filled out two reports.  First, she talked about lions, which amused me because it’s not usually an animal she tries to go for.  Then she filled one out about deer.  That also amused me because it’s the exact same kind of deer we try our best not to hit as we’re driving home at night.  Her lion report said: Lions sleep a lot.  Lions eat meat.

As a caution, I did not expect that amount of writing from the boys in kindergarten.  Princess has a natural interest in writing and drawing that the boys do not.  So, she will naturally write more than them on her own.

What were my expectations for our Zoo Animal Observation sheet?

Future Ticia here, as you can see I wasn’t expecting super a lot from my kids because they were in early elementary when we did this.

For second grade and under 2-3 sentences, a simple picture, and scientific name.

For upper elementary, I would expect a solid paragraph including lots of details.

This was part of our study of Land Animals using Apologia Land Animals.

More Land Animal fun

• Ungulates, what are they?
• What to do when a bear attacks
• Farm Animals Unit

Let’s see what others did this week:

Back when I hosted a Science linkie, I would share what people had done from the week before. Sadly many of the blogs are gone now, but these two blogs are still here.

Buggy and Buddy highlighted some fun bird watching ideas and supplies to pick up.  Batman has recently become interested in birds, so I enjoyed this post a lot.

Life with Moore Babies shared a great make your own frost experiment.