Flamingos

The zoo started back up their preschool classes. The first one was about Flamingos. The teacher's name is Joy. She started out the class by talking about how a flamingo stands and how they eat. Rilian was standing like a flamingo.

Joy read a story about a baby flamingo who asked its mom why they are pink. The mama flamingo told her baby that they are pink because of the food they eat. This is true. If you didn't know how a flamingo gets its coloring, now you know. In the story, the flamingo ate different things and turned that color. He wanted to be green, so he ate grass. He wanted to be purple, so he ate grapes. He wanted to be paisley, so he ate a woman's swimsuit. It went through alot of different colors. It was a cute story.

After the story, we went and did a craft. There were different colored feathers to put on a flamingo. Rilian chose to put these colored feathers on his flamingo.

And then he went and showed it to Joy and told her what his flamingo ate in order to have that colored feather. His flamingo must have eaten something gross by the look on Joy's face.

 Everyone got to see and touch a flamingo egg.

Next Joy brought out a kiddie pool full of dirt and eggs so the kids could make flamingo nests. She also brought out a container of plastic bugs and a strainer so the kids could pretend to eat like a flamingo. Flamingos don't eat bugs, but Joy was unable to find any plastic shrimp, so she improvised. I thought it was funny that all the kids gravitated towards the dirt like magnets. Hardly any went to the water to eat like a flamingo. Rilian has the green egg and is moving the dirt to make his flamingo nest. 

You can watch Rilian move the dirt like a flamingo does. If you have never seen a flamingo nest, they move the dirt to make a tall mound and then they make the top flat so the egg will not roll off.

After a while Rilian decided he wanted a pink egg in his nest, too.

I finally got Rilian to look at me!

After the kids were done making flamingo nests, we got to go outside and look at the flamingos and feed them.

I really need to learn to not stand with the sun behind me when I want a picture of my kids looking at me...

After looking at the flamingos, we went to look at the other animals in the zoo. WARNING! This next video is gross...if you have a weak stomach, you may not want to watch it. Apparently, it was feeding time and this bird was tearing into this rat! Feel free to make the video full screen if you want a closer look. 

My kids always want to run down this hill at the zoo.

We had to walk past the flamingos again to leave the zoo. So, I took another picture. Do you see the white one? That is a mama flamingo. When the mamas feed their babies, they lose their coloring and turn white. There are also two gray flamingos. They are a little harder to see in the picture. These are the baby flamingos. It will take them about 2 years to become pink. They were actually born in the spring when I went to the zoo with Seven's preschool class for a field trip. I saw them hatch out of their eggs!