Ending Our Day With a Critter Encounter

I tried to get the boys ready for school early this morning since we were leaving around lunchtime for a homeschool group Critter Encounter.  One mom put together a field trip to a nearby library where animals are going to be brought in for the kids to learn all about them.  

My boys are very excited!  



But first I wanted to finish up our polar bear paintings that we started yesterday.  

After painting we read a few more chapters in Polar Bears Past Bedtime.  We then read a book called Polar Bears by Mark Newman and a few poems out of the book Polar Bear, Arctic Hare; Poems of the Frozen North by Wileen Spinelli.  




For math I told the boys they could pick out what they wanted to do today.  No one wanted to work on McRuffy and no one wanted to play the same game or get along either.  They each ended up using a work sheet.  I found a great polar bear multiply and color one for Ian here.  And that same sight had a butterfly add and color sheet for Alec.  Evan, of course, picked out some dot- to- dot sheets. 





They watched a documentary while eating lunch called "Africa" and learned about the animals of Africa.  We watched giraffe's battle, learned of the odd relationship between meerkats and a bird called a Drongo.

After lunch we headed out to our critter encounter.  We got there early and I let the boys run around and play outside on the lawn.  I realized that while they did their 15 minutes outside all week I had slacked off on my real goal to get outside with them.  Since we were early for the show I thought this would be perfect and it was.




Once we got nice and cold and a bit snowy we went inside for the presentation and it was AWESOME!  The kids had a blast.

We got to meet and pet:
  •  2 ferrets
  •  a chinchilla
  •  a dove
  • three different types of rabbits
  •  a guinea pig
  • a naked/hairless rat
  •  a chicken.  
We met many new homeschooling families and the kids couldn't stop talking about it the whole way home.  The only downside I saw-- all the boys now want a pet!  I got requests for guinea pigs, doves, chinchilla's and ferrets!

The man putting on the demonstration didn't help much either when he insisted that the animals were all very easy to take care; just feed them, clean up after them, give them fresh water and lots of attention.  Sounds easy, and I have been thinking of caving on getting them some sort of pet but I just don't think we're quite ready yet.












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