Discovery at the Lehigh Valley Zoo

Preschool and pre-k classes at LVCC's Fowler Center on Main Street went on a fantastically fun field trip to the Lehigh Valley Zoo! The children had the opportunity to learn more about their favorite animals and see them up close.

A multi-sensory experience, the children pet goats, fed ducks, listened to the birds chirping, and watched the peculiar behaviors of several animals including turkeys, cows, and horses. The ostrich and zebra were the most popular among the whole zoo. The kids got a kick out of the ostrich, who seemed to enjoy hanging out along the fenceline. 

Playing on the zoo's playground, the children rode the merry-go-round and spring riders shaped like colorful animals. They also posed for silly pictures as baby kangaroos!

After their morning of zoological exploration, the children returned to LVCC for a healthy lunch. Exercising minds and little legs sure can work up an appetite!

View Photos of Preschool/Pre-K @ Lehigh Valley Zoo

Beating the Heat with Water Week

This was a hot summer week, but LVCC at Stones Crossing kept the thermometer low by chillin' with the children! As part of the learning experience (and also to beat the heat), the classes had water play and learned about different water environments.

The teachers created a day at the beach in LVCC’s backyard where the toddlers were engrossed in water activity. By floating toys in buckets of water, the tots discovered the buoyancy of various weights. Exploring with their senses, the toddlers dipped their tiny fingers and toes into the water and were asked how it felt. Teachers also encouraged the children to share materials and expand their social skills. The children worked together to fill cups with water. They then spilled the cups of water into the bucket, which practiced development of fine motor skills.

Preschool and Pre-K learned about ecosystems, focusing on ponds and the living creatures in them. A few toads made a special guest appearance. The preschoolers went on a “bug hunt” outside to find crickets and gnats to feed the toads. Concentrating on the life-cycle of the frog, the class learned about hibernation, the difference between frogs and toads, how frogs make different sounding croaks to talk to each other, and how they use their tongues to get food. The children then participated in gross motor play by acting out frogs, toads, and other kinds of water animals. As an art project, the class painted blue (for water) and green (for plant life) to make a paper pond. They then fine-tuned motor skills by cutting and pasting the green paintings to create a finished pond.

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The Colorful Spectrum of Da Vinci Science Center

The Da Vinci Science Center On the Move program has returned to Lehigh Valley Children's Centers for another successful summer season. School-age children at LVCC (Campus Center, Fowler Center, South Mountain, Truman School, and Western Salisbury School) will experience four science sessions with Da Vinci in their own classroom.

Students enrolled in LVCC at Truman School completed their program this week with a final lesson on color artology. While exploring the science of art, the children discovered their own color by mixing the three primary colors using colored liquid, pipettes, and lab trays. They then made their own kaleidoscopes using colored polymers.

In past lessons, the class was introduced to the chemistry of matter and phase change while conducting dry ice experiments. Through collecting and analyzing fingerprints, capturing DNA (with a saliva swab), and analyzing data, students explored forensic chemistry. Using ingenuity and a few building blocks, students constructed towers and gained knowledge of architecture.

Dance the Summer Away

Too hot for you this summer? Then dance, dance the day away with the cool cats enrolled in LVCC's summer school-age program. We have moves hotter than Jagger!

The summer school-age students attending LVCC (Western Salisbury, Truman, and Union Boulevard) are taking dance lessons from The Repertory Dance Theater. This week, we popped into LVCC at Western Salisbury to watch. Performing a few moves to Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, our little stars practiced the scene from Act I where the gingerbread soldiers chased away the mice.  The dance instructor then took the rhythm of Kenny Loggins and matched it up with another scene from The Nutcracker to create a few "Footloose" and fancy free moves.

  

View Photos & Video of the Dance Lesson

Education Outreach with the Lehigh Valley Zoo

In the upcoming weeks, many LVCC school-age and preschool children will entertain special guests from the Lehigh Valley Zoo. The Zoo brings a collection of animals from their Education Outreach program.

Tulani the African Penguin

A favorite guest is Tulani the African Penguin. As it's name implies, African Penguins come from the coast of Africa. Penguins are monogomous and mate for life. Their diet consists of  fish, crustaceans, and squid. Tulani's distinctive black and white coloring is a vital form of camouflage - white for underwater predators looking upwards and black for predators looking down into the water. The children participate in an experiment that simulates an oil spill. They dip a swan feather in cooking oil dyed black and then wash the feathers with Dawn dish detergent. Taking two minutes to fully clean a feather, the children are able to calculate that it would take over 200 minutes to clean one penguin caught in an oil spill.

Otis the Argentine Tegu, a large stocky lizard living in the meadows and open forests of South America, is another visitor from the Zoo. Males are larger than females and can grow to a length of 4-½ feet, while females rarely grow larger than 3 feet. They are very intelligent reptiles and fairly calm to handle. The children enjoy feeling it's bumpy reptile skin. Tegus are omnivores that feeding mostly on vegetables, but also insects, mollusks, small mammals, birds, and amphibians. At the Zoo, they eat mice, chicks and vegetables. Although tegus are not currently endangered, they may become so from overhunting for their meat and leather.

Practicing gentle touches with
Bean the Toe Toed Sloth.

The Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula may make an appearance. Living in parts of Bolivia, Argentina Northern Chile, these tarantulas are found burrowing in the ground in the desert and scrubland. An adult, 3-4 years old, can reach approximately 6 inches in its total leg span. Although these tarantulas are venomous and deadly to smaller animals, humans will only get a rash if bitten or from the tiny hairs. For this reason, children are not allowed to touch the tarantula. This type of arachnid will eat any creature smaller than itself (other arachnids, reptiles, insects, or small mammals). In the Zoo, their diet consists of crickets.

The youngest addition to the traveling program is Bean the Two Toed Sloth. He is named because his rainforest habitat in Central and South America is disappearing. The rainforests are being torn down, while coffee bean and chocolate fields are planted in it's place. Bean has only two toes on his forefeet, although, like other types of sloths, he has three toes on the hindfeet. Once 18-month-old baby Bean is full grown around 3 years, he will be 23-28 inches long, weigh 9-18 pounds, and grow very long hair.  Sloths are so slow that algae grows on their hair, giving them a greenish tint. In the rainforest, this helps camouflage them from predators. Spending most of their life hanging from trees, sloths are nocturnal animals that only descend to the ground to go to the bathroom. Sloths eat leaves, shoots, fruits, nuts, berries, bark, and even some small rodents. Food can take up to a month to digest due to their slow metabolism. The children especially enjoy petting Bean with gentle touches to feel the softness of his fur.

By the end of the summer, LVCC at Stones Crossing, LVCC on Union Boulevard, LVCC's Campus Center, and LVCC's Judith Chase Early Learning Center will all have participated in the Lehigh Valley Zoo's Education Outreach program.

View Photos of the Lehigh Valley Zoo Program