Critter Classes at the Zoo

I’ve been doing a lot of Critter Classes at the zoo lately. The school year is almost ended, so classes from all over the state are getting in that last field trip: a critter class offers a great way to keep little ones engaged for half an hour before turning them loose onto zoo grounds!

I typically meet the class at the admissions booth where they divide themselves up into groups. My classroom can hold 50 people; but for littler ones, it’s best to keep the classes to around 20 kids - otherwise it just gets too much and you loose control of the kids. I have no idea what the other groups do while I take the first group inside – I assume they wander the zoo until it’s their turn to come in.

Inside, I have the kids find a seat, filling up the front rows first and filtering on back to the last row. We have tables set up three across and three deep, each one seating three students. We also have extra chairs scattered here and there for the adult chaperones.

I introduce myself and go over a few of the ground rules (indoor voices, raise your hand, don’t talk while I’m talking, etc…) and then I get to the exciting part of the class.

I have four tubs full of critter stuff: pieces of fur, sculls, bones, teeth, horns, antlers, feathers, and whatnot. I typically take something out of the tub and hold it up for the class to see. Then I ask the kids to raise their hands if they can guess what animal it comes from. Since I only have about 20 minutes with each group, I usually only call on 2 students to see what they think it might be. Sometimes they surprise me and get it, but most times they’re way off (“Is it a dinosaur bone?”). Once we identify what animal it comes from, I’ll tell them a little bit about the animal in general and about the animal we have at the zoo that matches it, maybe even show them a photograph of the zoo animal.

At this point, I call on volunteers from the adult section to hand-walk the item around the class, making sure each child has a chance to feel it, inspect it, smell it, what ever. When I first started doing these classes, I just let the kids pass the items around – but that quickly turned in to a tug-o-war over who gets to hold what and for how long. It’s just so much easier to have the adults help out – even if they did think they were going to just sit back and let me handle the kids a while!

These classes can be a lot of fun, but I learned early on that I should not do them if I’m working on a migraine. The classroom is really bad for echoes! One tiny little voice can reverberate all over the room until it’s turned into a very loud roar. Multiply that by 20+ little kids, all of whom are SO excited to be at the zoo, and the critter stuff is SO gross, or SO cool – you get the picture, I’m sure.