Visiting the Toronto Zoo

We visited the Toronto Zoo as part of a homeschool group booking and got tickets for $8.00 each! Even though it was over a 2 hour drive to get there we could not pass up that deal!

We found out while we were at the zoo that we could have downloaded learning pages HERE by grade before arriving to use on self guided tours. A great resource for anyone planning to visit which we will do for our next visit.

Searching the map and planning our route

Our first stop was the panda exhibit

entering in to their habitat

Learning about the bamboo forest

Examining a panda skull

We learned the nutrition of giant pandas is unique and is a great example of nutritional specialization, as bamboo makes up 99% of their diet. Due to their inefficient digestion, giant pandas need to consume comparatively large amounts of food in order to get enough nutrients. Giant pandas, therefore, must spend up to 16 hours a day foraging and eating bamboo. While usually eating about 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of bamboo daily, it is possible for giant pandas to eat almost twice that much (38 kilograms or 84 pounds) in a single day. At the Toronto Zoo, nutritionists and wildlife care staff will be responsible for providing over 40 kilograms of bamboo to Er Shun and Da Mao everyday!

In addition to the large quantities of bamboo, Er Shun and Da Mao will also be offered leaf eater biscuits with added vitamins and minerals, and some fruits, including apples.

If you CLICK HERE you can download the Giant Pants teacher resource from the zoo. Its chock full of great information (above paragraph was quoted from there).

The end of this post will show our journal activity...incase you get tired of all the animal pics :)

Since we saw so many different animals I am mostly just going to post pics.

All the girls loves the various climbing areas around the zoo.

There were plenty of shading places for a picnic lunch

Sierra loves searching for peacocks all around the zoo

Kodey and Tina

Daddy and Aayla watch Tony the Rhino

Josh liked Tony alot :)

For our Journal work we searched through these two animal books looking for animals we saw at the zoo. Then we wrote out their names in our journals and drew a picture of one of them.