How to make the most of your zoo membership

Do you love going to the zoo but get tired of just looking at the animals? In this blog I am going to share some of my favorite tricks to make the most of your zoo memberships or visits, from what to pack for lunch to how to make the trip more educational.

We are proud members of the Toledo Zoo in northwest Ohio. We buy a family membership and then choose to opt in to the "plus two" pass. This allows me to bring any two guests every time I visit. This is important to us because we never have to spend extra when we want to invite a friend or grandparent, cutting into my weekly budget. We visit most often in the spring and fall when the animals tend to be more active and the zoo less busy. We also always enter on Anthony Way Trail, there is a bathroom before you get to the gates, so we all visit the potty and apply sunscreen in the safety of a common area, not the parking lot.

I almost always pack a lunch so that again I can save some money and bring home any uneaten food. When planning for a lunch I choose a theme based on an animal and what they eat. For example if we want to eat by the elephants today I pack peanut butter sandwiches, popcorn, lots of veggies, and water! I always try to pay attention to what time the animals will get their lunch so we can "compare" meals. Sometimes we get lucky and we all have carrots together! We lay a blanket off to the side of the attraction or sit on a bench. Don't forget Clorox wipes to clean hands and tables!

I am always looking for ways to sneak educational information into our daily life. Kids are sponges and we as parents sometimes forget to feed them knowledge. This year we starting have a new "game" every time we visited the zoo. To my surprise it worked like a charm! Below I have shared some of the lessons we used this year that my cubs enjoyed.

Sign language: This was my favorite and Ali cub still signs all the animals we learned when we visit. I used www.babysignlanguage.com to find all my signs. They have a dictionary that made my life so much easier! The night before I got online and printed out the 12 animals we wanted to learn for that visit, we would visit the animal and practice the sign. At lunch we recapped what we learned in the morning and on the way home we recapped them all. I did follow up by having them share with family after the visit.

Food: For this lesson we focused one visit on what the animals eat in the wild and one visit we talked about what the animals eat at the zoo. We found that sometimes they are similar and some are totally different. The night before I printed a simple sheet that had two sides, one for herbivores and one for carnivores, as we read what they ate from the signs in the encounters we put them in two groups. Then that night for dinner we would pick "who" or which animal we wanted to be and either ate a vegetarian or a meal with meat. Daddy Wolfe prefers when we eat like a lion :)

True or Dare: This one worked best when I had older cubs along for the visit. I would come up with a true or false based on weight, food, home country, and family traits, It was fun to see who got it right! This one did not take much prep work, I mostly came up with my statements from the info boards at the zoo.

Scavenger Hunt: We all know how this one goes! I have the template on my pinterest page for your using. This works better when you have a bigger group of cubs to keep the game going. We split up into two teams and made it a game.

Be an artist: I think this one was my favorite to do when I just had my cubs. We all took a color pad and markers or crayons and spent time making a portrait of the animals we saw. It allowed us to spend more time at each encounter and really see what the animals do! We caught a couple feedings during they day and saw how the animals spent their time. Then I was able to keep the pictures and see how they change each year.

The biggest problem I still argue with my cubs about is when and why they get to buy a souvenir. Who likes to spend $20 on crap they don't need? So here is what we tried this summer that worked most of the time. They were allowed to purchase a new item every other visit and we would only give them $10. If they wished to spend their own money that was on them. We followed the same rule with any other "add on". I tried to be good at digging up the toy they bought last visit and bring it along on the visit when we did not get something new so they still had something.

We truly love our zoo and we look forward to learning about and getting to know our zoo friends! I hope this post made you a little bit more excited about visiting or joining your local zoo.

Until next time, keep mommin'

xoxo