The students enjoy their day at the zoo during the third week of Tama’s library summer reading program. Photo provided.
The second week of the Tuesday summer reading program was very informative. The presenter was from the Blank Park Zoo Education Department in Des Moines. She brought two friends, Olive, a tiger salamander and Erie, a 30-year-old Gopher tortoise. Olive is from Iowa, but Ernie is from the southeastern United States.
The children learned a lot about the different habitats and the animals found there. Dragonflies were made for this week’s craft from pipe cleaners, mini clothespins, and glue-on jewelry.
Names were drawn for prizes, Kool Aid and Goldfish crackers were the snack of the day. On Thursday of week 2, the group had 3 educators from ECILOG – the League of Towns of East Central Iowa.
They read the book Construction Site Mission: Demolition! By Sherri Duskey Rinker. They also donated their own copy to the library! They brought in a cardboard building and talked about all the different building materials that can be recycled and how they are used. Everyone learned a lot, including the adults in the group. Then the dragonfly craft was made and the group had their snack.
On Tuesday of week three, our presenter was Cedar Rapids storyteller Darrin Crow. Darrin entertained everyone with great stories about fox and bear, opossum, turkey and rabbit. All the animals that can be found in “Beyond the Beaten Path”. The students really enjoyed the folklore tales and had a good laugh.
Then they made animal masks for crafts and the treat was a special version of a Smore. The group made our snack with little pretzel sticks in a marshmallow, dipped in milk chocolate and rolled in graham cracker crumbs.
Very delicious and easy. Prizes and activity packs were distributed as every week. On Thursday, everyone read stories about fishing. Finally, the group made the animal mask and also had smores.
