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Zoo camp offers learning, fun
Published 6/18/2009 in Local News : Education
By MONICA SPRINGER
What happens when you're camouflaged? That's the question Misty Ayers, distance learning coordinator at Lee Richardson Zoo, asked a group of first- and second-graders Wednesday morning.
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Brad Nading/Telegram — Misty Ayers, left, lead a group of first and second graders in a choreographed rhyme about primates Wednesday in a Finnup Center classroom during a Lee Richardson Zoo Summer Edventure camp. Ayers is the zoo's distance learning coordinator.
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Do you keep still or do you keep moving?
Nine children answered her: You keep still.
This week, first- and second-grade students are participating in Lee Richardson Zoo Edventures, a morning class that offers hands-on experience, educational activities for children, as well as crafts and snacks.
The first zoo camp this week, called Shapes of Apes and Funky Monkeys, allowed children to play a game of camouflage hide and seek and find materials in the zoo that allowed them to camouflage a plastic toy frog.
Lane Durst, 7, stood in a grassy area near the Wild Asia exhibit at the zoo. He turned around, closed his eyes and counted to 20.
The other eight children then picked a hiding spot in the nearby bushes and behind park benches.
But there was a catch to the game. The eight children who were hiding from Durst had to be able to see him from their hiding spot. They had to hide like an animal would hide — as if it were trying to camouflage itself.
One of the purposes of Shapes and Apes and Funky Monkeys is to explore adaptations and focus on movements and actions that help animals survive and sense the world around them, said Michelle Mills, curator of education at the zoo.
At first, Durst couldn't find the children who were hiding.
But when he closed his eyes, he heard a bunch of people run to the bushes to hide, he said.
Ayers and Tarra Tyson, education assistant at the zoo, told Durst that apes and monkeys also use their sense of hearing in the wild, too, along with their sight.
After the game of hide and seek, the group headed back to the Finnup Center to participate in another activity.
Ayers handed each of the children a plastic frog in different colors. Then, the children had to go back outside with a small white box to collect materials from the ground — leaves, twigs and branches — that would allow the frogs to be camouflaged in the box.
The children scoured the ground in the zoo and eventually filled their boxes.
Kayli Spickes, 6, said she liked the hide-and-seek game and gathering materials to fill her box for her frog.
"I like animals so much. I want to be a zookeeper," she said as she started to glue leaves to the bottom of a box to house her frog.
Durst agreed, saying he liked that everyone playing hide and seek still had to see the person who was looking for the other children.
Each Edventures class lasts from 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday, and there are still openings for future classes.
There still are a few spots open on next week's Monkey Basics class, for first- and second-graders.
After that, third- and fourth-graders can take a class called Simian Splash Monday through June 26 or Garden City Jones and the Temple of Zoo July 13 through 17.
Fifth- and sixth-graders can take the class Chimp Chat and Gorilla Gossip July 6 through 10.
To register, parents can pick up a form at the zoo and return it with a $35 fee for each week-long class.
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