Z is for Zoo!

Hayden's big end of the year field trip was to the zoo. We went last year with her K-1 class, so I felt like an old pro doing it again this year. As stated earlier, we were unable to pull off the one parent chaperone - one parent parenting situation because of dueling field trips and then because of rescheduling. But we ended up that I was still able to go (thanks Grandma and Jason for little sister wrangling for most of the day) and the weather was GORGEOUS, about as perfect as it could be.

don't you love the class shirt?!

 As part of my learn-to-be-a-photographer project, I finally tried out the telephoto lens I had borrowed from my mom, thinking that the zoo would be a good place to use it. Maybe I'd get really good pictures of the animals! I didn't figure on the limited amount of time to play with the settings and check the images as I tried to keep up with energetic and fast moving first graders. Plus keeping just the telephoto lens on (b/c of time and ease) and using that to take photos of close by people was rough. Basically photos aren't as great as they should be but you can see some of the animals we saw, and get an idea of the amazing energy these kids had for most of the day! After lunch I switched to my easy digital camera which worked fairly well and was much lighter to carry.

ELEPHANT! this was one of my best with the telephoto lens!

The N.C. Zoo is divided into two sections - Africa and North America. We did Africa first, walking all over to see as many animals as we could. Due to the number of chaperones for our class, our 'group' ended up being two grown-ups and four kids. An excellent ratio!  I think we had pretty good luck seeing almost every animal in their enclosure that we walked to. The kids never really wanted to stay for very long to really watch the animals - they were MUCH more interested in climbing on any and EVERY thing they could. The number of times we had to say "stay on the path" was ridiculous!

Giraffes! Our first animal and my first time with the telephoto.

sleepy lion - the lens definitely helped here!

look who can sit on a chimpanzee sculpture!

who's king of the chimpanzee?!!

a real live CHIMPANZEE! I wish the kids had been more interested in watching them.

who also fits on a lion sculpture?!

Queen of the Lion Sculpture!

GORILLAS! The young ones (a year and a half ) were cute!

GORILLA! showing off his best angle...

FLAMINGO! (and it wasn't even breeding season, so we didn't have to be quiet. H was very excited about that.)

love the air vents in the aviary!

we met up with more classmates in the pavilion

baboon baby playing - the adult would put the baby on the rock, walk away and the baby would run away and leap on him. this happened several times.

surfing on a hippo at hippo beach

Hayden and her buddy on an elephant

ZEBRA BUTT!!!

Hayden and her baby hippo

 After lunch break, we took the parking lot tram over to the North America side of the zoo. There are a lot more play areas there, which are good for the afternoon when the kids are slowly losing steam. We did check out the swamp area and saw alligators and cougars. Plus we checked out the seals and the polar bear, as well as played in the new(ish) expanded kid zone play area and the playground. We even walked up to see the otters and bobcat (both specially requested by the kids) and the black bear before catching the tram back to Africa and meeting up by the buses.

trunk thrones that the kids thought were so cool - anyone have a big stump we can make into a throne?

snake right by the edge of the swamp area path - I realized that there was really nothing stopping him from crawling onto the sidewalk, but he was happy to just rest in the sun

they're on a boat! (even singing row, row, row your boat)

ALLIGATOR! They sure looked like statues but signs assured us they were real, and behaving like regular alligators

cougar cubs

HARBOR SEAL who happened to like swimming upside down

checking out one of the play areas in the kid zone

watching the river otter antics

OTTER!

watching the black bear

PATCHES the POLAR BEAR! She was hiding when we first walked by her exhibit, but we risked being late back to the buses to see her as we were headed out. We got to see her pee!

last group shot, end of the day - everyone is still smiling!