Homeschool Nature Day - The San Diego Zoo

Every Friday we get together with our homeschool group (a very small group of just a few families) for our Nature Day. Typically, we visit a spot in Orange County each week where the kids can explore, observe, and learn about nature...as well as spend time with their friends. That is the goal, anyway. For the kids, it is not at all about observing and learning, but all about running around and being with friends, which is great too. They are getting to run around and be with friends in some beautiful places! We often visit different beaches, nature centers, parks, etc. It's a good thing for me too because I would never venture out to these places on my own. I prefer to remain within about a 5 mile radius of our home (where, in my defense, we also have some beautiful places that we frequent!). I never know where anything is, and I never remember how to get anywhere, and I really don't like to drive very far. So, if not for this group, we probably wouldn't experience many new places. The problem is, I also have such a horrible memory that I don't remember one place from the next. They all run together for me...so I might as well just stay within the 5 mile radius of our house! :) I'm hoping that the kids have a better memory than me though, and that they will remember and appreciate the various locations that we visit!

This week for our Nature Day, we ventured out of Orange County to visit the San Diego Zoo. And, if anybody out there has a group of 15 or more and you're interested in visiting the San Diego Zoo, let me just tell you that it only cost me a total of $4 to pay for myself and my two kids, which is even better than the $8 that I thought it was going to be! I'm not sure how it worked out that way, but we made a reservation for our group ahead of time and when we got there, it was a total of $20 which we split up amongst our group of 5 families. If you can't tell that I'm excited about that, then you don't know me. I LOVE A DEAL!! Plus, there's no way we would have gone if we had had to pay anywhere near full price. (Side note: Full price is now $37 for adults and $27 for children. That seems insane to me!)

The kids had fun running around the zoo and checking out all the animals. I'll have to admit that I am not much of a "zoo person" myself. I really am constantly amazed by God's creativity though, and it's kind of cool to see so much of it all in one place. Much of the time, Addi seemed more interested in trying to locate the animals on the map, rather than seeing the actual animals themselves. I have a feeling that she would not consider herself a "zoo person" either. I tried to explain to her that the real thing is much more interesting, but she continued to seem more interesteed in finding them on the map. Then, when we would get to an animal, instead of spending much time looking at it, she would spend the time figuring out on the map what we would see next. We had to make a couple of detours off of the path because Addi couldn't pass up the eagle or the zebra or whatever it was that was supposed to be along the way.

Overall, it was a great day. Jake remembered last night that we never ended up making it back up a different path to check out the tigers (which we had said that we would do at the end of the day), and he wasn't too happy about it. But, I informed him that I thought I had overheard someone saying that the tigers weren't out today anyway! :)

I know that nobody cares about random pictures of animals behind bars since you can see much better pictures anywhere else that you look. So, I'll only include a couple animal pictures that I have specific reasons for including!

The Car Trip Down to San Diego

If anybody else grew up singing the Kookaburra song without knowing what a Kookaburra was...now you know!

This one is for Luke. I wanted to get a good picture of one of the enormous snakes, but the snake area was too crowded with tons of people in front of the glass. So, I got this little guy instead. I thought that Luke might enjoy a picture of him eating the mouse!

This one is also for Luke. I think it's called a Komoto Dragon, or something like that. It's the largest lizard in the world and will eat anything from bugs to a half ton water buffalo...whatever it can catch. I thought you might like that, Luke.

My personal favorite

Jake thought that all of the zebras were pooping. I didn't correct him.