Zoo Scavenger Hunt Printable (for an Ecology field trip)

Zoo Scavenger Hunt Printable (for an Ecology field trip)

The zoo is the perfect place to visit this fall when we study Ecology in first quarter year 3!  You can see many different habitats (which imitate different biomes), all sorts of animals, and even a large variety of plant life.  Maybe your program is already planning a zoo field trip, or maybe you are an at home user and have a local zoo you can visit.  In either case I’ve made for you two versions of a field trip printable to bring along!

Both printables contain the same items to find in the zoo, so just pick the one that suits your students/style/effort level/time you have to prepare. The printable has questions to answer and animals to find that go with each week of Ecology this year.   A couple examples are “Write or draw a consumer you see in the zoo.” or “Find a habitat that imitates a rainforest biome.  What animal lives there?”

The first version is a simple printable scavenger hunt sheet.  You can print it back and front, or just print both pages and staple together.

picture of zoo scavenger hunt printable

Zoo Field Trip Printable

(Please download and save to your computer before printing for the best results.  Also make sure you choose ‘actual’ and not ‘fit’ in printing options in Adobe Acrobat if that is your pdf viewer program)

After I made that, I had visions of my 5 year old trying to keep up with a sheet of paper in a zoo and fill it out (not good visions)- and had another idea to make it easier for little kids to keep up with them- a Mini-book of course!  Print this front and back (flip along the long side), cut in half, staple and fold in the middle.  If you have the resources, print on cardstock for more durability.

Zoo Field Trip Printable Mini-book version

(Please download and save to your computer before printing for the best results.  Also make sure you choose ‘actual’ and not ‘fit’ in printing options in Adobe Acrobat if that is your pdf viewer program)

step 1

step 2

Plus you could hole punch the corner and make them into scavenger hunt mini-book necklaces.  If you can find a pen or pencil that threads onto string, then you have a fool proof* scavenger hunt kit for your student’s zoo field trip. (*Ok, with kids, nothing is fool proof. I’d still pack some extra pencils if I were you).

step 3

This guy is ready for a zoo field trip!

Some other ideas to get the most from your Ecology Zoo Field Trip:

Practice skip counting! Skip count bird legs by 2’s, skip count other animal legs by 4’s, skip count big insect legs by 6’s. If you eat lunch there, skip count the chairs at the tables! Practice that skip counting wherever you can!

Practice some Language Arts.  There are a couple tasks in the Scavenger hunt printable (like write some zoo nouns and animal verbs).  But make sure you talk about the different actions animals make.  Some fly, swim, waddle, slither, hide, gallop, etc.  There are a wide variety of verbs to talk about when you’re at the zoo.

Consider taking a picture of your student and  their favorite animal.  They can write a report on it when they get home and have a picture for visual support.  If you are in a program, an animal report might be a great presentation topic. Make sure they include all the Ecology information they can (if it’s an herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, where it is in a food chain, the biome it would naturally live in etc).

But most of all, remember to have fun and admire the beauty and creativity that God put into each creature!

Have a wonderful field trip!

 

 

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