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Orana Park Trip

What a fantastic day we had on Friday - and we were so lucky with the weather!!.

The children were a credit to you all - they listened, asked pertinent questions, and were genuinely interested in what the Zoo School teachers could tell them. We learnt about how the zoo helps animals and how some people harm animals.

We learnt how rhino are killed purely to get their horn (we even all got to hold a horn worth over $70 000.00 that had grown down instead of up and so had been cut from their rhino so she could grow a new one), how giraffes are killed only so their tail can be used as a fly swat, how lions are killed because they kill farmers animals and about other endangered species.

We learnt how we can help these animals and what being endangered means.

Thank you to you all for taking time out of your week to join us. I really appreciate your continued support of my programme.

Why do we have zoos?

This is the question we are trying to answer at the moment - and it is creating some discussion. Is it so people can go and look at all the lovely, exotic animals that we couldn't normally see?

Or is it so that we (the zoo) can help to save endangered species?

Are zoos a good idea? Are they kind to animals?

What do you think? Post your ideas so we can discuss this more. We are not looking for a "right" answer - we are just trying to form an opinion based on evidence.

ANIMALS

This term our inquiry is on CHANGE with the focus on animals. We are hoping to answer our big question "Do we help or harm animals?".

Before we can answer this we have first had to work out what we think an animal even is. It has proved to be very interesting because - for the most part - the children did not believe that things like ants, snakes, fish, frogs and birds were animals. So... we have done a lot of "discovering" on this topic - and we are new clearer on what an animal is - and we have also learnt to classify animals into groups. Life cycles have been looked at only briefly as the children have a reasonable understanding of these already.

This week I posed the big question of whether we help or harm animals and their opinions are divided.

I have also asked them to start thinking about "why we have zoos?" and tomorrow we will discuss their answers. All this is called the "Search" part of our inquiry. We are searching through information to try and find what will help us answer our questions.