Kindergarten
Engaging a child’s curiosity helps them to better appreciate the world around them. Students will put on their fox listening ears and owl eyes to help them learn about backyard conservation. Their owl eyes will help them find all of the cool adaptations that native species have to help them survive in Ontario’s four seasons.
Using key terms such as adaptations, herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore, students will learn how these words help to save a WILDlife at the rehabilitation centre. By the end of the presentation, students will find themselves dancing like a beaver, hopping like a rabbit, and slithering like a snake! This fun, educational and interactive program is great for all primary grades.
This program is 2.5 hours long and starts with a short presentation covering concepts and key terms that will assist students in working through the series of interpretive stations. Students are placed in small groups and rotate through the various stations, 6-7 in total. Some of the stations include the live animals while others use educational tactile tools to assist them in learning key concepts such as camouflage, nocturnal, hibernation and food webs. Our student activity book is a great opportunity for teachers to track the students progress, or use as a follow up activity at a later date.
For this program specifically, we send out 2 wildlife educators to work within the small groups. Having parent volunteers available to help assist students is necessary as most students can not fully read at this age.
A maximum number of students allowed to participate in the program, 30. This number is to ensure that each student receives the most interaction with our wildlife team. For the safety and welfare of our animals we also like to keep the numbers low.
During our time with the students we work through a discovery method of learning. We get students to put on their “owl eyes” which helps them be a wildlife detective. Our job at the wildlife centre is to be a wildlife detective too! We can learn a lot about an animal just from using our eyes. Important characteristics that animals possess tells us key information about them.
Making discoveries about an animal's way of life helps teach specific concepts:
- Are they nocturnal?
- What do they eat? Herbivore, Omnivore or Carnivore?
- How do they survive 4 seasons in Ontario?
Each student is able to participate in holding, touching and guessing animal artifacts. These bones, pelts and skulls are clues to the live animal that will come out for interaction. While each student is able to interact and touch with the program animals, they do not have to.
Our time spent with the students is full of music, dancing, animal noises and of course animals! Making a memorable experience for everyone.
Animals that may come to your classroom include:
- Red or Silver Fox
- Porcupine
- Virginian Opossum
- Striped Skunk
- Kestrel
- Groundhog
- Bobcat
...and more!