About a month ago, I started my hunt for all the educational resources available to homeschoolers.  Mostly this consists of me going to the website of every single museum I can think of and clicking on their “education” page, then emailing somebody to ask if homeschoolers can use that too.  The first one I took advantage of was the Indianapolis Zoo’s Education Kits.

Here’s how it works:

First, go to the website here and find one that fits your kids.  Next, email to reserve it.  Sometimes it might already be checked out, but they will work with you to find a time that it is available and convenient for you.  Then, go to the Hix Education Building at the zoo (it is the one to your right before you hit the entrance gates), pay a $10 rental fee, and take your kit home for the next two weeks.

We borrowed the Project Elephant Kit.

As you can see, this case is HUGE!  We were not expecting that.  I doubt the other kits are as large, though they might be…

The kit included many, many things.  Books, VHS tapes (OK, maybe they could update that part), posters, a replica of an elephant foot, elephant hair, elephant food, and more.  It also came with a binder full of facts and lesson plans.

Now, I borrowed this at a bad time.  It was already May.  We had so many outdoor activities and other things going on we did not get to use it as much as I wanted.  That was poor planning on my part.  Or rather, lack of planning at all.  I just got so excited about the prospect of it that I got it and didn’t really think about what we would do.  So in our home I didn’t get to use this as much as I would have liked.  However, I took it to our preschool class at co op, and it was great!!

This particular kit is really made for slightly older kids, so I tweaked it a little for the 4-5 year olds.  I borrowed a couple of books from the library.  First we sat in a circle and read  An Elephant Grows Up (Wild Animals (Picture Window Paperback)).  Then we passed around all the different pieces of the kit.  Well, the age appropriate ones at least.  They got to feel the hair, smell the treats, and compare the cast of a tooth to their own teeth.

After that we read Elmer by David McKee.  This is such a fun book that all the kids love.  Then we moved on to craft time, starting with an Elmer craft.

I found and printed out elephant outlines from the internet and they colored and decorated them any way they wanted, as part of the Elephant Parade at the end of Elmer.

Then each child got a large piece of paper (brown wrapping paper I found at the dollar store) with an outline of an elephant’s footprint on it.  They got to trace their foot next to the elephant’s to compare size.

I made one poster for myself of all of the kids’ feet with the elephant footprint.  I didn’t get a great picture of it, but it is hanging on my schoolroom wall now.  

Even though I borrowed this kit for my own personal homeschool use, it was one of my favorite co op classes of all my three years of teaching co op.  This kit gave us so much to work with, and the kids were really interested in all of it.

For the $10 rental this kit is a bargain and I definitely recommend it, whether you are using it in a larger classroom setting or in your home.  It can be modified for use with younger kids, as I’ve shown you, but on its own is great for any elementary age.  Maybe even beyond.  Heck, us parents were just as interested in experiencing all of it as the kids were!  I will definitely be going back to try out the zoo’s other kits at later times.