Zoo Camp -- A,B, Seas

Here are the pics of Clara at zoo camp I promised. Today was her last day for this session. She gets to go for one more week, the first week of August. I truly cannot say enough about the zoo camp here. It is a fantastic program. Clara looked forward to it everyday, so much so that she never complained about getting up and going to bed early. When I would show up to pick her up everyday, I always had to sit through "one more song" or "one more story" because she just didn't want to leave. The whole way home she would tell me excitedly about everything she learned, like, did you know that baby flamingoes are gray, not pink? She learned that the daddy penguin carries the egg on his feet (she even got to imitate it) and that trash in the ocean is bad for the sea life, for example, if a sea turtle was to swallow a trash bag thinking it looked like a jellyfish. She learned that many consider a stingray a type of flattened shark and she even learned all about gills. It was amazing to listen to her each day after zoo camp, she was happy and enthusiastic.

Everyday when I dropped her off in the morning they would have several stations set up in the classroom to engage the kids while waiting for everyone to show up. The kids were quiet, happy, and busy. Clara would leave my side as soon as we walked in the door. I would have to chase her down after signing her in to stick on her name tag. She didn't care to say goodbye to me, she was just ready to get involved. This is a pic of her in one of the stations where they had various stingrays and underwater creatures in a tub of water and different shells to look at as well.

Every day Jonathan and I would find something in Fresno to keep us busy until it was time to go back and pick her up. He would periodically say 'Sissy' for the whole 3 hours -- he really missed her. He'd get really excited each day when I would tell him it was time to go back to get her. When I would return to pick her up Jonathan would find her in the group of kids and run over to her to give her a big hug. Clara always asked to stay for one more story or song and so Jonathan would sit down right next to her and join in with the group.

They were singing this cute song called 'Slippery Fish'. http://www.colleenschildcare.com/Song Cards/Octopus.mp3 I had to ask the teacher for the words because that night both Clara and Jonathan were running around the house singing it with Clara trying to teach Jonathan all the hand motions. It was adorable!

Still singing 'Slippery Fish'.

I mentioned before that they were well staffed. You can see in this pic the main instructors were the girl in the turqoise polo shirt and the one in the black polo shirt. The other 5 girls in the green shirts were helpers. There were actually 2 others there that you can't see in this pic. All the same teachers and helpers were there each day and this pic shows the whole class of kids. They were almost matched one for one. The helpers were all very young -- like high school age. Clara told me that each day when they'd walk into the zoo, each child was assigned a teacher and a buddy, so each teacher only worried about 2 kids as they walked through the zoo...it was a fantastic feeling that I had left Clara in such a safe environment. I had been worried if she was ready for this before it all started. I think just the word 'camp' made me a little apprehensive, even if she wasn't staying away over night. All my fears were put at ease as soon as we showed up the first day.

One of the days, Jonathan and I kept busy by hanging out at the zoo too. I was hoping to run into Clara's class when they went over there to get more pics, but it turned out to be the one day they didn't go into the zoo because they had a puppet show instead. Here's Jonathan at the prairie dog exhibit.

What's in there?

Just a Camel!

We caught the end of the puppet show when we went back to pick Clara up.

Clara made this fabulous turtle and named him Squirt, like the baby turtle from Finding Nemo

All the kids were pretending that their turtles were scared and stuck their heads back in their shells.

Today Clara got to bring home all the other art projects she had made at zoo camp this week. There was a jelly fish, a penguin pencil topper, a color sheet, and a rainbow fish...and it was all tucked nicely in this beautiful envelope she made as well.

Like I said, there's nothing bad I can say about this program. It's the best thing Clara has been involved in yet and she's already bragging to her friends that she gets to go back in a couple weeks. It's a wonderful feeling when you can pick your child up from something like this and know that they've been stimulated intellectually and creatively...and they had a blast doing it!