Animal Academy-June and animal projects

We tend to be a little project crazy here so it was with trepidation that I told the kids we need to do animal projects for their final animal academy. Just about every year it seems we participate in a science fair with one homeschool group or another. It always seems to end up far more intense, costly and Mom intensive than I plan it to be. Now even the younger kids are old enough to do their own project and in fact the oldest kid was too old for the class we attended and didn't need to do a project I had high hope this year would be different. The kids would do their projects 100% independently, we would not spend a lot of money on said projects and we would not leave too much of the work for the final week.

In some, no most ways it went well. Hayley did her project 100% by herself, Colin perhaps 80% and Tristan needed help but Hayley helped him so I didn't have to. We did spend too much on cute extras and doo dads but guess we had to as creative (overworked), colorful (gaudy), interesting (unwieldy) projects are a family tradition.

So here are the pictures of the projects and the lower photos are from the June Animal Academy.

Colin chose Lizards for his project. Very easy to research and find materials for.


We found wooden lizards to paint in Michael's crafts and Freeze the dog (below) kept wanting to attack Colin's painted lizard!.



Tristan chose marmosets, which was very hard to research and find printables and decorations for. I finally convinced him to widen the topic to monkeys in general.






Hayley choose tarantulas, which was pretty easy to find things for.




Hayley was very artsy with her project and every time I looked at it I found new little touches of creativity.




So there we have it, three projects and it total it took the kids 3-4 weeks with only a few days of that being stressful-we gotta get this done-type days.

On the big day we gently packed up the projects in the car, leaving very early so we could pick up Grammy before class. My Mom lives close enough to Animal Adventures for us to give her a flying visit many of the months but usually it was just that a hello and goodbye as we were always pressed for time with Bobby needing to get to work and often the kids having other afternoon commitments. We did indeed make it in time though, added an extra 30 minutes to get Grammy so left at 7:30 and got to Animal Adventures just before 10:00 which is the start time.

Kids had fun visiting with the animals which now seem like old friends. We will miss them and hope to get down to see them again this summer.

Below: Hello there!


Prairie dogs


Tristan waiting to be hooked up to a microphone for his talk on marmosets. He did great! The children had the option to speak or just display and Tristan was my only one who gave a talk.


Let's see those projects....


Oops, there you go Colin try again.....


A last visit with more friends. Hayley wants a tarantula so much and we will probably get her one soon. She gave this little girl or guy some attention before we had to leave.


Colin poses with the sloth, the staff woke up the sloth or the final big day! I don't think I've ever seen the sloth awake!!!


Velcro the lizard! Colin wants a lizard very much.


They may have bunnies at home but the kids are always happy to hold more bunnies!


Tristan poses with the resident marmoset Luigi.


Snuggle baby. Colin holds a Kinkajou


We said our final goodbyes to the animals and then Grammy treated us to lunch at a 50's diner! Good fun although the kids didn't know what to order. I'm sure Grammy was thinking "they sure don't get out much". I guess we don't have a diner in our area and we rarely eat out since it's costly for a bigger family and also harder to find vegetarian choices here in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire! Anyway everyone did eventually find some yummy choices to eat and the kids had fun looking at the 50's decor. Tristan was asking why they have "Leave it to Beaver" there when we watch it these days. I guess he didn't realize it was an old show...it's new to him!

Postscript to the post.

We got very used to seeing all the animals at Animal Adventures this year and we've also visited New England Reptile Distributors, 2 different zoos, and taken a less hands on (look but don't touch the animals) class through a more local homeschool group. It's become more common to see less common animals for us. Today I was filling our pool and saw an "alligator" upside down in the pool. I was all ready to jump in the cold water and save it, my immediate thought was why is it upside -and- this pool water is too cold for that alligator! Well of course it wasn't real it was a realistic plastic alligator the kids have but having seen a fair few alligators in person this year my brain thought it was real.