One thing that I have loved about this lockdown period is the projects, tackling those little jobs that I'd either been putting off or just didn't seem to be able to make time for. Last year when Opeie was deep into his beetle project I decided to up-cycle a bureau for him, beetle style. A place for a Coleoptera enthusiast to keep his entomology books, research material and beetle hunting items. Typical individual homeschool kid never used it and kept all his bits in various sections of the house, so today I thought I'd reclaim it for myself and use it for all my painting and sketching things. Opeie helped me repaint it, the feet had been waiting to be done since I painted it and we found all the creative bits we needed to really make a fun space for me to create. It was the perfect little project to start pulling me out of my funk and it was great getting my sidekick helping too.
I'm going to start this post off on a negative note, which I don't usually do as I always keep all of my posts happy and upbeat but stay with me. For as long as I can remember I have been 'Anti Zoo's'. I never liked the idea of animals being out of their natural habitat and trapped in enclosures, the whole idea of it weirded me out a little and because of this we had never taken the boys to the zoo. When I think about it now my view on this could seem quite odd as I have taken them to aquariums before... clearly I feel completely different about sea life.
After being asked to visit Twycross Zoo my initial thought was to politely decline, but before doing so I went online and did a little research on the zoo and this is where I realised that my thoughts and feelings about zoo's especially in Twycoss' case was very wrong. After reading about their conservation projects and research into animal behaviour, breeding programmes and sustainability, I closed my laptop feeling very different about the views I had previously had. So we decided to visit Twycross so that we could really see what the zoo was all about.
If there is one very important thing that I have learned since starting this amazing home-schooling adventure with Opeie, it is that no day sat in a class room, having information thrown at you is ever going to trump a day out learning through experience and that really is what home-schooling is all about for us. Add another home-schooling family into the mix and your educational fun is magnified as the children bounce their thoughts, feelings and ideas off of each other.
We picked probably the best day of the year so far to visit the zoo as the sun was out and there looked like there was no chance of anything changing, which for a day in April is good going. The kids were excited and us parents had our own favourite animals that we couldn't wait to see. What I loved from the get go was how immaculate the zoo was and how welcoming and friendly the staff were which will always put you in good stead for a great visit anywhere.
With maps in their hands we left the kids to show us around (a great home-schooling lesson in itself).
First on their list of places of interest on the map was Lorikeet landing, I don't think I'd ever seen a Lorikeet before and I think its safe to say that we were all really impressed by the bright and vibrant colours on these beautiful birds. I was great to be able to walk into the enclosure and have them landing right next to you as you made your way through. I love the way that there was no shortage of information about each of the animals there, having the educational side of things made easy for us home-schooling parents.
Being the little punk enthusiast that Opeie is these days, he was in awe of the black and white zebra mohicans. It was interesting to learn that the zebras stripes can be used as camouflage but also that their monochrome pattern can confuse and deter flies.
one of the most appealing things about the zoo for me was the shear size of it, you could easily spend the whole day there wandering about, especially on the glorious day that we visited. with something different everywhere you turn, even if you were not interested in reading the information about the animals the visit would be a stimulating visual experience. Being able to see animals that you would never get to see unless visiting their natural habitats, really is very special.
Ive always been a huge fan of the giraffe and as we approached the enclosure we realised we had arrived at exactly the right time, to see them up close while they were feeding. For me personally this really made the visit.
One of the things that really surprised me about the visit was the the way I felt about animals that I'd not really thought about before. We're always watching nature documentaries and although its fascinating to learn about animals, to actually see them is a real experience. I'd never really given Gorillas a second thought, when we reached the enclosure though I could have sat there watching them all afternoon and it was clear that we all felt the same.
At lunch time we found a spot of grass to have our picnic. When we looked behind us we were shocked to see two enormous tortiose happily munching on some grass. (like I said 'everywhere you look there is something interesting).
Tummys full, it was time for our little map reading tour guides to take us to the next place of interest, the Lemurs...
It was at this point that one of our party members started to get very VERY excited... and it wasn't one of the children. When arranging the trip I had been concentrating so much on the kids having a great time I hadn't thought for one second about our friend Helen having the time of her life. It turns out she loves Lemurs and having them walking along right next to her was clearly making her very happy indeed.
With so many amazing animals to see we were fully entertained for the day and the kids had so much to talk about on the way home. As a home educating parent these are the sorts of days out that really have the most impact and the visit has already spurred on many activities and interesting talks about habitats and interesting facts about each of the animals we saw.
If you are planning on a visit soon the new Chimpanzee Eden has just opened. Check out the link HERE!
The thing that really made this visit special is that it made me realise that although it is good to have strong feelings about various things in life, they are not always right and sometimes you can be proved wrong. Twycross and the amazing work that they do to learn about each of their animals while educating along the way really is something special and we hope to visit there again very soon.
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs.... it's all about the Dinosaurs, Opeie is hooked and he has surprisingly dragged his brother in on all the excitement. These wonderful beasts have kept us well entertained over the last few weeks with some great themed activities. Earlier this week me and Opeie were chatting about his new favourite subject and we got on to the topic of whether there is a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet. Obviously a conversation like that is clearly going to kick start an activity.
I wanted to answer Opeie's question but i didn't know myself so aside from the fun of finding out if we could complete a dinosaur ABC i wanted to show Opeie how we find the information we need. We headed down to out local library, we can walk to which is great so we went looking for books that could help us with our task. I'm always surprised at how quiet our library is most of the time. We've been there today and considering it is the school holiday and it was raining out it was a ghost town.
With a stack of books to scan out we headed home and found out a big roll of paper ready for our fun research activity. We wrote A-Z down the one side of the page and then started by seeing how much we could fill in from the information we knew ourselves. I thought Opeie would go straight in for his favourite Triceratops but he actually started from 'A' and shouted Archaeopteryx which i was really impressed by, followed by Brachiosaurus. C was our first issue but we did manage to fill in quite a few before turning to our first research device, books.
As expected there was a great source of research material at the library and as we sat in the hallway surrounded by books we looked through them together hoping to fill in all the blanks from our dinosaur ABC. We managed two thirds of our activity before Opeie wanted to move on to something else, so today we picked up where we left off and got stuck in hoping to complete what we had started. This time though we had Seth on hand who turned out to be an excellent researcher.
We had looked through around 20 Dinosaur books but we still hadn't completed our A-Z so we moved on to our next place for information, the internet. Now i know we could have just gone straight on to the internet to get all the relevant information we needed but wheres the fun in that? The boys love reading and going to the library and i think it is really important for them to know that that information is there readily available to them, i did explain though that sometimes the books and information are not always on hand and that is where the internet will reign supreme.
The National History Museum's Dino directory filled in all the gaps we needed. Saying that though we were only missing F,J,X,Y and Z so we had done pretty well. We also learned some interesting facts too as we searched on the 'in your country' section and found out that 23 dinosaurs were discovered in England, we are unsure how accurate this is though as Opeie pointed out that all the Pterosaurs were missing from the directory.
Thanks to some great researching from the boys we found a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet and picked up some great dinosaur facts a long the way. I cant stress to people that i meet enough about the importance of using the library and the information that is available to you cost free. Having access to that kind of literature is a great tool for children to be able to use in all aspects of their learning.
Now its time for me to do some research of my own for the next big Dino activity...
ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!
*NOTE, Opeie was so excited about 'W for Wooley Mammoth that I didn't have the heart to tell him.
