Monday, April 5, 2010

KCZoo School Group Fun


Food Chains
In our After School Program, the topic of the day was food chains. Food chains are very important in each ecosystem, it is when one animal eats another to survive. If one animal completely disappears, then the food chain is broken. So we wanted to find out if any of our after school students knew what a food chain was. One child answered with a lot of enthusiasm, “Like McDonalds and Burger King.” Hmmm…close but not quite what we were looking.


Poop
We all know that pooping or as the scientists call it defecating is very natural and necessary part of life. Yet people are both fascinated and grossed out by it when our Zoo animals do it. We decided to take it one step further and put it in a jar. We had our after school students try to match the poop to the correct animal. It wasn’t too hard, especially if you think about the size of the animal and what it eats.


Spring has sprung
Spring is supposedly right around the corner even though the weather is having a tough time catching up. You will see trees budding and the shoots of flowers breaking through the ground soon. But what about the plants at the Zoo? In our Zoo Learning Center we have many different kinds of plants.