Twycross Zoo

We recently had a trip to Twycross Zoo, which is not a big zoo by any stretch of the imagination but the kids were really looking forward to their day out which came about as DS1 is doing a project on Animals of Africa - I was not looking forward to the visit as I am opposed to keeping animals in cages and was trying desperately not to push my views onto the kids.

Anyway we had a lovely day (apart when I got upset at seeing a cheetah laying down looking very depressed in a very small cage) and the kids too had decided (with no proding from me, honest 'guv) that it was wrong to keep animals in cages just for us to look at. However, we also appreciated that some of the animals were endangered or on the brink of extinction and were kept at the zoo as part of a breeding programme to reintroduce them into the wild - they felt that keeping the animals was justified in this case 'for their own good'.

They also noted that if the zoo were to keep the breeding programmes going they needed the income from ticket sales to look after the animals. So a good day on all fronts, a day in which we all learned something and I am really pleased with how the kids processed the information they had and the conclusions they came to. I can feel a debate coming on with lots of comparisons and reasoning involved, mwahh hahh hahh! The kids are not going to like it tho' they just wanted a good old fashioned day out just for the fun of it...... you know what? They are right. Writing about it doesn't make the info stick in their minds any more so we won't do it.

The young ones do want to do something about zoo's so I have downloaded lots of lapbooking stuff for the little 'uns to do on animals/zoos from Homeschool Share (a fab site by the way that definately needs investigating).