MOLA | amwz photography

As part of one of my daughter's school assignments we took a trip to the Fort Worth Zoo. We have year passes for the family and it is well worth every single penny. Just by going a few times it pays for itself! With kids who are naturally curious about animals and now putting geography mixed with that we hunt down the zoo keepers and ask away! What college did they go to to study? What did they study? What 3 top things can they tell us about "animal X".. it goes on from there.
When you take a herd of kids, like I usually do, I suggest asking each kiddo which is their favorite animal that they really want to see. I make a point of seeing those animals for sure and any others we might come across are a bonus for the day! Before any of my kids had cameras, they had journals. We would stop and I have the kids draw their favorite animal doing whatever they saw. I know this sounds a bit crazy but they enjoy it- call it sketching and it sounds even better! They can write a poem about it, a Just So Story (a la Rudyard Kipling), or describe it in detail using a sentence strategy I had taught them. At any rate, we would share all these on the way home from the zoo.. I can't wait to do this again this summer!!!

On this day, however, one of my kids had a project to do on the kangaroo so off to the zoo we went! Little did we know the MOLA was opening that weekend!! We *had* to go see what all the hype was about and boy we were not let down!! It is amazing!!!!!

I can't wait just to go ONLY there.. seriously- you could spend a long time in there checking out so many things from snakes you can PET to a crocodile to other lizards.. so facinating!

Each creature has a unique place to be showcased so kids and parents alike can learn so much. There are lots of very helpful zookeepers, biologists and zoologists to ask questions and they don't mind sharing at all!

My girl took her own camera to capture what she wanted to remember her time just with mama. It was so fun for us to discover this - all an extra on the way to the kangaroos! Gotta love the extra animals along the way!