A Day At The Zoo

For Josie's Gotcha Day, she wanted to go to the zoo.

Well, technically it was her second choice.  Her first choice was to, "go around the world to tell all the people hi."  We were able to get her to put that one off until her 10th Gotcha Day.

So those who know me know that I am incapable of going somewhere like the zoo without turning it into a full unit for school.  I tried to resist the urge, but let's face it, unit studies are my thing.  The kids love them, I love them, we are sticking with them.

We used the book A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

I found an activity pack on Mudpies and Makeup's blog that worked perfectly.  I pretty much hijacked her entire week, so thank you Sarah!

We spent a lot of time learning about what Zookeepers do everyday.  Josie got way into this and spent a few days playing Zookeeper with all (there are millions) of her stuffed animals.

I also used our day at the zoo as the jumping off point for our animal kingdom study.  

While we were there, we made a list of 12 animals she wanted to study.  We will use this throughout the year, as well as any animals that come up in our unit studies, and have a dandy animal kingdom notebook at the end of the year.  They also had scavenger hunt sheets and mad mapping going on.

School stuff aside, we had a great day at the zoo.

Livi and Leila were able to meet up with us and the weather was awesome.  I brought cupcakes too because Gotcha Days need cupcakes.

Gabe, crawling into the lions den.  No biggie.

Asking why one elephant's tail was longer than the other.  Turns out she stepped on it and pulled all the hair out!  YIKES!

So one more time Josie Girl, Happy Gotcha Day!  I am SO glad I get to be your Mom!