Posts Tagged ‘Wild Wheels’

Mar
31

A Zimbabwean Visitor Turned Friend

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Education Office,Public Programs,Safari School,Zoomobile

Dought and the Education Department in our usual form

The Education Department was fortunate enough to have Dought Nkomo from the Painted Dog Conservation Project in Zimbabwe visit with us for a week. When we knew he would be spending time with us after working with the Facilities Department it was time to pack his schedule FULL of fun, educational Houston Zoo experiences.

Dought came over to our department from March 18th-March 24th. Over the course of the week he experienced many of our programs. The first day we took him around the Zoo to show him how some of our on-grounds tour programs work (Wild Wheels, Senior Safari, etc.) he even got to go on one of our Wild Wheels programs!

Dought and Elizabeth holding Makobe-a leopard tortoise after Wild Wheels

That same day he received a one-on-one training in Interpretation Skills from our Senior Education Specialist. As we do with anything we celebrate, we decided to have a potluck lunch to welcome Dought on his first day. Unfortunately he was feeling a little under the weather from all of the travel and new food so we kept it simple-corn casserole, mac and cheese, rice-the basics.

Dought then got to visit with our Wild Winks specialists and learn what we do during our overnight programs. Learning about this program was of increased significance since the kids sleep over at the Bush Camp in Zimbabwe for 4 nights.

Our ZooMobile program is one of our most well-known educational programs, and we thought it would be fun for Dought to tag along on one. He went with an Education Specialist to Lonestar College to teach college freshman about adaptations. He also spent some time with Bennett-our Interpretive Programs Supervisor to learn about theatrical programs on Zoo grounds (Story Safari, Zooper Challenge, Zoo Adventures).

Dought and DeAndra on a ZooMobile with a volunteer docent-Bonnie

Finally, we wrapped up his visit with a trip to the Texas City Prairie Preserve, a free field trip that we conduct on land owned by The Nature Conservancy. This program is very similar to the Bush Camp program in that kids study a local ecosystem from the bugs to the water and develop an appreciation for declining flora and fauna in the area. Dought had the chance to sweep for Texas insects, go seining in Moses Lake, learn the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken mating dance and test the quality of water in the brackish habitat. He said he really enjoyed seining and that he usually doesn’t like water because he can’t swim (Zimbabwe is a land-locked country) but he walked along the bank and used a net to catch some fish!

Dought and Bennett conducting a Zooper Challenge in the Children's Zoo

At the end of his stay Dought took home certificates to certify that he completed training in Community Outreach, Interpretation and Curriculum Design and Instruction. PHEW…not bad for a week! We hope Dought enjoyed his visit as much as we enjoyed having him here. It’s not every day you get to learn from such a well-spoken, friendly and knowledgeable conservation hero. It seems as though he learned quite a bit from his visit to Houston, but he may never know how much we learned from him.

To learn more about Painted Dog Conservation visit our conservation website: http://www.houstonzoo.org/painted-dog-conservation/ or visit the PDC website: http://www.painteddog.org/.

If you’ve enjoyed reading about Dought and Xmas you can read more about them on our main Zoo Blog and Conservation Blog: http://www.houstonzooblogs.org/zoo/ or http://houstonzooblogs.org/wildconservation/.

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Jan
24

Safari School Has Started Again!

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Featured,Public Programs,Safari School

We're playing a fun sorting game with the spots of different cats!

It may not feel like it outside, but spring has arrived in the Education Department.  At least our spring programs are here!  Safari School was scaled back a bit in the fall but we are excited to say that it has returned full-force for the spring.  What is Safari School, you ask?

Great question!

Safari School is a program for our preschool-age friends (3 to 5 years old) and their favorite adults.  Each week we focus on a different animal.  The class includes a short, kid-friendly lesson, an animal-related craft, and an animal visit, as well as a variety of other fun activities.  Depending on our topic, the visit might be an animal coming to the classroom or a trek out into the Zoo to see the animal in its exhibit. 

Making a cool leopard craft by adding spots!

For spring, Safari School returns to a twice-weekly schedule; the same topic is offered on both Wednesday and Saturday.  We have some cool animals coming up this semester, including chimpanzees, parrots, porcupines, and otters.  Want more information?  Check out our website!

Taking a class at the Zoo this spring sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?  Even if you don’t have a convenient preschooler to accompany you to Safari School, we have lots of other classes kicking off in February.  Wild Wheels for kids up to age 3, Senior Safari for adults 65 and up, Home School Series classes and Wild Winks overnights are all available this spring.  We’re even hosting our first annual Teen Career Conference in February!  Explore our Education page for more information about all of our exciting programs.

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Dec
01

Tour of the BEC: Education Office

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Education Office

A look at our colorful education offices!

It should come as no surprise that a group of creative people work in a colorful space.  The walls and workspaces themselves aren’t so colorful (with one very blue exception), but instead it is the personalized decorations that everyone has used to adorn their spaces.  Photos of family, animal pictures from magazines, sample crafts and thank-you certificates hang on cubicle dividers and walls.  I even have an old graphic from the llama exhibit on my wall! 

The Education side of things is a little more populous than the Volunteer side.  We have eight cubicles, six of which are occupied by Education Specialists, and three side offices for the two supervisors, our education manager, and the two members of our interpretive team.  Wondering what those extra cubicles are for? One is the home base for our eight part-time teachers, the wonderful crew who lead our Wild Wink overnights (and yes, they sleep at the Zoo during their programs).  The other is currently not in use, but provides a great workspace for our Camp Zoofari interns over the summer.

The eleven people who occupy these offices (plus the part-time staff who occasionally share it) are responsible for all of our variety of education programs.  From Camp Zoofari and ZooMobiles to on-grounds programming like the Zooper Challenge, for everyone from toddlers in our Wild Wheels program to seniors on our Senior Safari, the team that uses this space does it all!

Our last stops on the tour are well-organized resource spaces – check back for the final post!

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Nov
04

Tour of the BEC: Classroom C

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Education Office

Our preschool classroom is colorfully decorated!

If you’ve been in the Brown Education Center at all, you’ve probably seen the giant elephant and giraffe that are built into the walls of our preschool classroom.  We call this room Classroom C; we’ll see Classrooms A and B later in our tour.

The elephant and giraffe might be impressive on the outside, but inside the room is even more exciting.  The inside of the elephant is purple, not gray, and the walls are painted with a mural of animals.  Sound-buffering “clouds” hang from the ceiling along with a big red seabird, colorful cubbies live near the door, and a fish tank burbles in the corner.  This is our preschool classroom, after all, and we want it to be fun and welcoming.

Classroom C is the main home for Safari School, and Wild Wheels uses it as well.  We’ll even take advantage of the room for some of our other programs; Senior Safari ends here with a little coffee and tea, and all of our whole-building events (like Educator Day) include classes in this space. 

Next time we’re heading to a bigger space: the Auditorium!

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Sep
23

Meet our Animals-Fish!

Posted by in Animal Fun Facts,Classes/Programs

In contrast to my last blog, I thought it would be nice to go from an animal that resides in dry, sandy areas to something that enjoys a cool, aquatic environment. What better animal than a fish?!

The fish tank!

In the Brown Education Center we have 3 permanent classrooms and one of them houses an aquarium with 2 freshwater fish. A Blue Zebra Cichlid and a Spotted Rafael Catfish live together and are cared for by two of our education specialists.

Our Blue Zebra Cichlid is cleverly named Donatello, and in the wild can be found in Lake Malawi, Africa. These fish can grow up to about 5 and 1/2 inches long and are mainly omnivorous. Donatello is a very active fish and can even be observed shaking back and forth with excitement or “wagging his tail” when people come near his tank to check him out!

Donatello, our Blue Zebra Cichlid

On the other end of the personality spectrum is our Spotted Rafael Catfish (Raphael) who rarely moves during the day. This species is found in the rivers of South America and is mainly carnivorous. They can grow up to 6 inches long and are most active at night.

As with most animals in the Zoo, even our fish get enrichment! Frozen peas bobbing at the top of the water provide constant entertainment (and a meal too). We can also move the substrate and create different piles of rocks that the fish can manipulate and move as well.

If you pop in for one of our education classes held in Classroom C (the first room on the left when you enter the Brown Education Center) you may meet these fish up close and personal! Every week our Senior Safari, Wild Wheels, and Safari School participants get to meet Donatello and Raphael…looks like it’s your turn now!

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Jul
30

The End is Just the Beginning

Posted by in Camp,Classes/Programs

Anybody else surprised at how fast the summer went?

One of this summer's Camp Zoofari highlights was a visit to Dinosaurs!

We have been having a blast this summer.  It’s hard to believe, but we only have two exciting weeks of Summer Camp Zoofari left!  Our teachers are already starting to finish up their summer commitment, going back to their own classrooms and schools.  What has been a trickle of last days will soon become a river, and before we know it the summer-sized Education team will contract down to our usual year-round crew.  The end of camp is always bittersweet; we’re glad to have survived another busy season, but it’s sad to say goodbye to all our campers, staff, interns, and Zoo Crew.  (At least we know we’ll get to do it again next summer!)

Wild Wheels, our toddler program, returns in the fall!

We may get a brief moment to breathe when camp ends, but the Education Department never comes to a full stop.  The end of camp means the beginning of fall programs!  The planning is already underway for our school-year classes.  During the summer we focus on the 4-12-year-olds, along with our 13-17-year-old Zoo Crew.  During the year that range expands dramatically, with something for every age.  Adults, seniors, school groups and scout groups, teachers, home schoolers and preschoolers, we even have Wild Wheels for kids up to the age of 3.  I enjoy the planning aspect of this time of year; creating themes for the semester, arranging for special adventures within the Zoo, and selecting handling animals.  It can be challenging to find the time during camp, but we make it happen - you can check the program websites soon for fall information!

So as we say goodbye to Summer Camp Zoofari, we say hello to a full array of fall programming.  We’ll have a short pause to breathe - most programs start again in September – but the transition has already begun.

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Jul
09

Flexibility is Key

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Zoomobile

A night tour is fun, unless it is raining or the animals are off exhibit!

 

One of the key characteristics of everyone in the Education Department is flexibility.  Of course, I don’t mean that we are all gymnasts.  (Although we do have two former cheerleaders and several former dancers on our team.)  I mean that the education staff are each creative enough to make it work when things don’t go quite as planned.  For every program we offer, there is at least one element of unpredicability.  

We have several on grounds programs that involve a tour of animal exhibits.  For Wild Wheels and Senior Safari, this may mean that one of the featured animals for the week is off exhibit or impossible to see.  Our Wild Winks overnights sometimes have a bigger challenge: the morning tour is before the zoo opens, and this means that every exhibit may display a cleaning keeper instead of an animal. 

Another element of programs that can turn into an element of surprise is booking.  Programs like Camp Zoofari and Safari School are individual registrations, making them a bit more predictable, but for groups that reserve programs we may end up with something different than what we expect.  For field trip programs, especially Adventure Classes, the biggest obstacle is usually number of students.  Our two classrooms are limited by fire code to a small group size, and if a school books one program for more than one class, we may end up having to change either the schedule or the location at the last minute.  Size is not the only piece that can be unpredictable; age can be as well.  We tailor our programs and curricula to the age group we expect, and if a Scout group or Wild Winks turns out to be younger or older than requested we may have to get really flexible.  

The variability of weather in Houston can also present its own challenges.  Our field research program at Texas City Prairie Preserve, Camp Zoofari, and Wild Winks are the three programs that require the most flexibility when the weather changes.  I’m not just talking about rain, either; rain we can handle.  Getting a little wet never hurt anybody.  Lightning and thunder, however, can cause some serious damage and force us to restrict our classes to the Education Building. 

ZooMobiles are a special brand of the unknown; unless we have been to a location before, we can’t predict much about the site, the setup, or even the class.  Sometimes what the group requested and what they are expecting are even different.  We’ve had programs where we were expecting to do 4 half-hour presentations and they wanted 2 hour-long programs, trips when we’ve packed to present Habitats and then have to change to Texas at the last minute, and even events where we planned for a festival table and what we ended up doing were back-to-back assembly programs! 

What a festival table should look like, as long as there's actually a table.

 

While there are big things that we know are unpredictable, sometimes it’s the little things that can be the biggest challenge.  I arrived once at a festival ZooMobile, which is basically a table of biofacts and a few handling animals, to discover that the event had run out of tables!  The Docent volunteer who was with me and I got out a few large biofacts to hold, and took turns handling one animal at a time.  A younger group on a Wild Wink overnight had gotten settled into the classrooms to sleep only to realize that the mounted animal biofacts that are kept in the rooms were too scary, and the whole group had to move into another room. 

The little surprises can’t be predicted, but we can prepare for some of the more common challenges.  We always include multiple animals in our planning for the “touring” programs, so even if one animal is not visible, hopefully others are.  There is spare food available for overnight programs, in case someone with a dietary restriction attends without warning.  And our biggest preparation is simply knowing that things may not go as planned, and a flexibility to make quick changes that is a key part of who we are as educators, and as the Education Department.

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Oct
14

When the Animals Don’t Show Up

Posted by in Classes/Programs,Fun on grounds,Public Programs

Meet the Keeper Talks, Safari School, Wild Wheels, or Summer Camp, many of our programs depend on the animals exhibited at the zoo.  After all, what would a class at the zoo be without animals?  Most of the time, the animals are visible, the participants are happy, and the programs go well.  Occasionally, the animal will even be eating, moving, making noise, or just really close to us, and those moments always make the classes extra-special.

But every once in a while, the animal decides not to show up.  Maybe it has a vet appointment, or the weather is too cold, or the keepers need to do maintenance on the exhibit.   Maybe the animal just feels like hiding in the back corner and taking a nap.  Whatever the cause, it is then up to the presenter to make it work.

Giant Eland at the Houston Zoo

Giant Eland at the Houston Zoo

This was the case for my Wild Wheels yesterday.  The cassowary was our first stop, and he had come to the front just long enough for everyone to see him.  But then we got to the giant eland exhibit.  There were zebras and nyala antelope, but no giant eland.  At that point I realized that I should have stuck some zebra stuff in my cart (the zebra are almost always out) but I hadn’t and now I had to talk about eland with no eland to see.

Fortunately, I always bring a picture of every animal I plan to visit on our tour with me.  This is mostly for the littlest ones, who often have a hard time noticing an animal if it isn’t moving.  I said something along the lines of “Uh-oh, it looks like the eland are still inside” and showed the kids the picture of the eland.  I wanted to include these animals mostly because this was the stop with the best biofact: horns!  Everyone looked at the picture, felt the horns, and learned that eland are the biggest antelope in the world. Then we moved on, hoping for better luck at our next exhibit.

Against all odds, we did have luck.  The next stop was the one I was the most concerned about: the giant anteater.  Our anteaters are often not visible at all, or are moving around, barely visible, at the back of their very large exhibit.  Yesterday, though, one of our anteaters was right up at the front, enjoying a snack from an enrichment tube on the front fence.  We got to see her giant claws, her long but very narrow mouth, and the tiny nose on the end of her elongated face.  We watched her for quite a while before we moved on to a few more exhibits. After that up-close adventure, the sleeping grizzlies and placid Komodo dragon were a bit anticlimactic. 

When the animals don’t participate, it is still possible to have a teachable moment.  Depending on the group, I have used these moments to teach about animal care or to describe natural behaviors such as sleeping or hiding.  I’ve subbed in pictures or puppets for the actual animal, and for summer camp I’ve taken my class to an exhibit as many as 3 times on different days to try to find an animal.  As unpredictable as live animals can be, I wouldn’t want to leave them out of a program or stop teaching at the zoo.  Unlike a museum exhibit or a handling animal, our exhibit animals provide us with both the possibility of seeing nothing and the opportunity to see something amazing.

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Sep
11

A Stroll with Strollers

Posted by in Fun on grounds,Public Programs

We watched the lorikeets at Wild Wheels on Thursday

We watched the lorikeets at Wild Wheels on Thursday

If I asked you to list the age groups that our education programs target, you’d probably think of school-age kids, maybe preschoolers, possibly even adults.  But do you realize that we also offer programs for infants and toddlers?

I know, you’re probably thinking, “Really?  Infants and toddlers?” but the answer is a resounding yes.  During the school year we offer a program called Wild Wheels, for kids up to age 3 and an accompanying adult.  Based on our attendance, it is definitely a popular program.

We all take turns teaching our classes, and I taught Wild Wheels this week.  We talked about animals that live in trees, specifically hornbills, howler monkeys, tamarins, clouded leopards, and fruit bats.  For each program we tour the zoo, looking at the animals that fit the day’s theme and interacting with biofacts like feathers, skulls, and puppets.  We finish up in the BEC, with books and toys and a live animal to touch.  This week we met a dove up close and personal. 

We cover each topic for a week, once on Tuesdays and once on Thursdays.  As Wild Wheels is a program you can register for on the day you attend, I never know how many to expect until we start.  On Tuesday, I had 11 adults and 13 kids, but on Friday I only had 3 and 3.  It is very different, teaching 24 vs 6!  It is a fun class no matter how many we have and the kids seem to enjoy it.  Of course, how much they get out of it depends a lot on how old they are, but smiling babies and laughing toddlers are clearly enjoying themselves.  The adults usually enjoy themselves, too!

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