Zoo Connection Curriculum - Animals and Their Babies

This is a wonderful lesson plan full of activities for young children to do prior, during and after a fieldtrip to the zoo. Students match baby animals with their parents, search for animals and describe how they resemble their parents, and once they return back to school they create a card sort of baby animals and their parents. This lesson was created by the Jackson Zoo in Mississippi, but would work well with any zoo in your area.

Weblink address (URL):

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives:

Concepts:

There are many ways to group animals; coverings and size are two of them
Baby animals can be grouped with their parents because they resemble each other.

Helpful Hints

Since the number and type of baby animals at the zoo is always changing, you can call the education department shortly before your visit to learn where to look for the babies. You can choose to include as many or a few animals in your activity as you wish. For example, you may want to choose 10 or 15 animals to put into categories, and 1or 2 babies to look at. You can also add other things for the students to look for (spots/stripes, horns/no horns, etc…) To save paper and make it easier to keep track of the activity sheet, copy it front to back.

References

Contributors:

Sarah Armstrong

Originator:

Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation