We're Going to the Zoo!

This year our Grade 1 class is going to be spending a week at the Edmonton Valley Zoo! We are very fortunate to be a part of a program sponsored by Suncor Energy Foundation that allows us to take our learning to a whole new level! Zoo School, here we come!

For the first week in April, we will be attending the zoo! Five whole days! We will have demonstrations, hands-on animal encounters, behind the scenes tours, speakers, and so much more!

An important part of Zoo School is creating your own year-long project. We began our project last week, called "An Ark Full of Animals". Each week we will learn about an animal at the zoo through fiction, non-fiction, math challenges, YouTube videos, and more. At the end of the project we will have created our own alphabet book of animals!

This week we began with the letter Tt! We read "A Tiger Tale" by Mike Boldt ... and were so fortunate to have a Skype visit this morning with him! It was so much fun to meet him, ask him questions, and take part in a drawing lesson. A wonderful book and a wonderful start to our week!

We tackled tiger-inspired patterning challenges in Math. 

We also enjoyed some non-fiction, too, and visited the San Diego Zoo Kids website to learn more! Did you know that no two tiger's stripes are alike? 

An important part of our week at the zoo is journaling. Today we practiced sketching in our journals, as we will be doing lots of this once we are on-site. We were patient with ourselves and tried to add as many details as possible. 

It has been exciting to see the students so engaged in their learning! Our ABC Animal journey has only just begun, but it is sure to be a blast! What animal could we be learning about next week?