Field Trip: The Zoo!

One of the great things about homeschooling is the freedom to take field trips as a family to the places we want the girls to experience. I have a whole list of filed trips both local and far away.

We have a really nice children's museum where we get free admission after lunch on Wednesdays. Our library also often has things for kids. My girls really feel like a trip to the library is a field trip even if there isn't anything special going on!

Sometimes we like to make day trips. We bought a season pass for which is about an hour and a half away from us. We made our most recent trip on a Friday. It was great! The last time we went it was crowded and sweltering. The fall provided a beautiful day with only a handful of other families.

The girls really like the North America area. So many of these animals are found near us and they enjoy seeing them up close. This is the first time we've been able to see the black bears and they were fascinated!

The girls really like taking pictures with the various animal statues. Some are small enough to climb on, but others are a bit larger as you can see! While I appreciate the effort the zoo puts into making sure their statues are accurately portraying the animals, I have learned to strategically place children in order to make our photos a little more family friendly!

We want our girls to have a biblical world view and we believe the biblical account of creation as told in Genesis. This creates a bit of a problem when we want to go to a secular zoo or museum. I stumbled across this zoo guide from the people at Answers in Genesis last year. Not only do I appreciate the content, but the pictures are beautiful! My daughters love reading it for fun while we're at home and I love that we can take it with us to the zoo. Since learning to read my oldest two daughters absorb everything they read and I am finding myself working to train them to be discerning more and more. You can click the link below to find out more information!

Zoo Guide: A Bible-Based Handbook to the Zoo

We were excited to get to walk the Dinosaur trail as well before it closed for the season. The dinosaurs are animated and noisy too! The line during out last visit was much too long to enter the trail, which costs a little extra. Because there were fewer people there the girls walked back and forth through the trail a few times. Sadly, this is when my camera flash sparked and blew out. I was glad I had taken most of the pictures I had wanted already. 

So our day was a success and we decided from now on we will only visit the zoo during the fall, winter, and spring...no more sweltering days for us!

Here are my ratings on a 10 point scale...

Family Friendly: 10

Kids Engagement: 10

Likelihood to return: 10 (We love our season passes!)