MINOT, N.D. (AP) - First-grade classes in Minot Public Schools were offered the opportunity to learn about zoo animals through a grant for the “Home Sweet Habitat” program to Minot’s Roosevelt Park Zoo from Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Wash.
The grant is through Advancing Conservation Through Empathy (ACE), a network of AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums in seven states in the northern region of the U.S. based at the Seattle zoo. AZA stands for Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
The visits to many first-grade classrooms began in September and concluded in late October, said Nicole Barnhart, education, conservation and outreach coordinator for the Minot zoo.
She said the goal of “Home Sweet Habitat” is to connect the kids to the animals to build empathy. The grant allowed the zoo to provide “Home Sweet Habitat” to the first-grade classes for free, the Minot Daily News reported.
“Basically, the kids get to meet an animal. We were visiting in person at the beginning of the school year,” she said. Later they had to move to virtual presentations.
Rhonda, a ball python, is shown in the foreground. In the background students at Dakota Elementary School at Minot Air Force Base are building animal habitats as part of the “Home Sweet Habitat” grant-funded program.
Explaining the activities with the program she said, “They would build a habitat for the animal that they met. If they met a spider, they built a spider habitat, if they met a tortoise, they’d build a tortoise habitat,” Barnhart said.
“They learned what an animal needs in its habitat so they need food, water and shelter. Then they would apply that and build their own habitat, making sure that the animal has food, water and shelter,” she said.
“It’s a great hands-on lesson to reinforce what they learned while meeting that animal,” Barnhart added.
The Minot zoo received another grant from Woodland Park Zoo through Advancing Conservation through Empathy (ACE) for biography signs about zoo inhabitants.
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