Monday we got up early and headed out to the zoo to meet our cousins. It was Lincoln's first trip to the zoo (he is only 2 months old)!
Since it was Mindful Monday we did a few things to work education and science into the day. I grabbed a great Zoo Bingo off of the 2 Teaching Mommies website (http://www.2teachingmommies.com/search/label/Tots%20Around%20Town) and each one was unique for each kid. The only thing I forgot was something to let the kids cross the animals they saw off, so I ran into the gift shop and bought pencils and the awesome staff sharpened them for me. What was also fun was that the kids were using the map for the zoo to help lead us to the animals on their Bingo. I think map reading skills are very necessary because I've been known to get lost once or twice in my life. I still have some trouble with my West & East. Kaiden explained to me later that night the directions and I was super impressed with his knowledge of N, S, W, E!
Another fantastic stop at the Houston Zoo is the Swap Shop. They have a great array of items for the kids to explore under magnifying glasses and some animals to interact with. Our favorite part is bringing in objects we find in nature and trading them in for cool items for "sale" in the shop. We brought in a turtle shell, an entire snake skin, petrified wood and a large piece of quartz. All the great items came from Grandma & PawPaw's farm! The staff analyzed each of the pieces, asked the kids questions about them and then told them more about each. The turtle shell was from a turtle that lived in water, not on land. The snake skin was a little tougher, she debated between whether it was a bull snake or a rat snake. She landed on rat snake, because the "scales" did not have a ridge in the middle of them. This is the 2nd time we've brought in petrified wood and every time they are very excited about those pieces. In fact one of the pieces we brought in a previous time is being used in the above picture where Zachary is observing. And Cameron was able to take the quartz around and observed that although it is quartz there are quite a few varieties of quartz that come in many different colors. All very interesting info!
While Zachary & Maggie were observing in the magnifying glass in the above picture, Maggie told Angela that "This is science!" We were cracking up at her for making sure Angela knew what was going on.
We also visited the Reptile House, which we have not done in forever. Last time we'd been in there it was humid, and dark and kind of stinky. Apparently they've done some major renovations because it was AWESOME!! The kids loved getting to observe all those creepy crawly animals.
Back at the house we had some water play time! We broke out water balloons, the sprinkler, water guns and then I blew up balloons and let them play "Hot Potato" with homemade paper plate paddles.
It was a great day and I think everyone had lots of fun. They don't even realize they were being "educated"!
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