With our mid year school holidays on the horizon we thought we’d head out to the Melbourne Zoo to check it out for a holiday family excursion.

There was heaps of parking, being a Wednesday which is great as it is usually packed at the weekend. You can also catch the train to Royal Park as the station is only metres away from the back entrance.

The first thing we did was stop for morning tea, an essential thing to do which we have discovered with experience over the years. In fact we seemed to be eating a lot all day!!

The bigger children received a map each and we tried our best to follow their desires.  There is just so much to see. we started off with the giant tortoises – they have been there as long as we can both remember (and in Sherry’s case that is quite a long time!).

Then the reptile house beckoned  …

oh the fascination of snakes, lizards, crocodiles, tortoises and … …. … you name it we saw it!

When we emerged from there we could hear the lions roaring really loudly and quickly ventured over there to see what was going on.

By the time we got there they looked peaceful enough  …

with their faces angelically pointed into the warm morning sun.

From then on we just followed our noses (and the maps as best as we could) …

and saw the  seals and fairy penguins …

elephants …

tigers …

butterflies …

peacocks …

and platypus, which unusually was sitting on top of a rock having a good scratch – what a funny sight that was! (Sorry too dark for photos!)

We saw the gorillas …

pygmy hippopotamus …

meerkats …

and pelicans.

The children ran …

and balanced …

and rolled on the grass …

and hid an awful lot (well the beautiful gardens were hard to resist!).

We had a lovely day and staggered home exhausted without even seeing all there is on offer.

We’ll just have to go back!

Memberships for the Melborne Zoo, Healesville Sanctuary and Werribee Open Range Zoo are very reasonable and after July 1st children are free on weekends, public and state school holidays.

From next year children will receive complimentary memberships for any day of the year!

One day one of the children brought in a case moth he had found in his garden.

He had been following this little creature around his garden for about a week, finding it in a different place each day.  The children were totally fascinated by the way it crawled around carrying its home along with it as it looked for food.

We explained to the children that the process a caterpillar goes through to become a moth or butterfly is called metamorphosis and we used the story of The very hungry caterpillar to explain it in a language they could understand. The very ordinary caterpillar is another lovely book they enjoyed.

They also had a great time acting out the story with The very hungry caterpillar felt board.

Metamorphosis is a fascinating concept for children so we pulled out a couple of metamorphosis puzzles on the life cycles of the butterfly and the frog.

In keeping with the tadpole / frog interest we are currently experiencing at kinder we set up a frog bog using lots of natural materials, frogs (the odd crocodile or two …  naturally) and our frog metamorphosis set.

Including materials like rocks and logs from our garden the water soon resembled a muddy frog bog. It was spectacular!

We have a wonderful frogbog CD which we played (hidden behind a fern) in the background, which made the play space sound and feel like we really were exploring a natural frog bog.

This CD doesn’t contain music just incredible Australian frog calls. It’s so amazing and the children were fascinated by the sounds real frogs make….not one single gribbet to be heard let alone a gulumph!

We have a great song we taught the children about metamorphosis and Sherry made some fabulous prop cards which the children use to act out the song.

Here are the words to the song – METAMORPHOSIS

Kittens look like cats,

and puppies look like dogs,

so why don’t little tadpoles, look like little frogs.

Bear cubs look like bears,

and little sloths like sloths,

so why don’t caterpillars look like little moths.

Kittens, puppies and other things don’t need a special process.

But caterpillars and tadpoles do.

They go through MET – A – MOR – PHO – SIS!

PS. The case moth was returned to the garden and a few weeks later our young friend discovered the empty case … how wonderful!

You can see some amazing photos of case moths and other incredible insects  through our ‘Moths & Butterflies‘ link.