East Grand Rapids — Some very special guests recently hopped, slithered and crawled their way into the hearts of students at Woodcliff Early Childhood Center.
As Heather Krajewski’s classes of 3- and 4-year-olds wrapped up their Zoo-phonics curriculum for the year, representatives from John Ball Zoo’s Traveling Zoo program stopped by to give students some facetime with some of the critters that helped them learn their ABCs.
Zoo-phonics introduces kids to the alphabet — and to shapes and sounds — using animals as visual representations and auditory cues.
“We go through the 26 letters of the alphabet and learn not just the sound they make and their shape, but an animal that starts with that letter,” Krajewski said. “For the letter ‘a,’ for example, it’s an alligator in the shape of the letter ‘a.’ Then we use a hand motion like an alligator opening and closing its mouth as we make that letter ‘a’ sound.”
No alligators were in attendance during the zoo’s visit, but there was a turtle named Bill, a giant African millipede named Archie, a Sonoran gopher snake named Sassafras, and a toad named Belle.
Meg Katerberg, educator in school youth programs at John Ball Zoo, introduced the animals to the students one at a time, sharing interesting facts about each along the way. Students learned, for example, that millipedes love to eat dead things, which is a “really important job out in the wild,” she explained.
“When he eats those dead things, he breaks them down, and then he helps them become part of the dirt,” she said. “That makes the dirt really healthy, which helps plants to grow really, really healthy and strong.”
But at the zoo, the millipede — and its hundreds of near-identical brothers and sisters, all named Archie — eat mostly fruits and vegetables, Katerberg said, prompting an enthusiastic “Yum!” from one student.
Students even had a chance to touch some of the animals, as long as they did so gently and cleaned their hands afterward.
“My friends, what did Bill feel like?” Katerberg asked after the turtle made the rounds.
“Smooth!” one student shouted; “Hard!” offered another.
Four-year-old Devon Minnema said Bill the turtle was his favorite of the animal visitors, “because it had brown and black on its shell.”
Classmate Collins Starke favored Sassafras the snake “because it had different patterns.”
Krajewski said the zoo tailored its visit to the classroom, age level and curriculum. She added that students and teachers alike learned fun facts about the animals.
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