A Fieldtrip to the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History

I took my kindergartners on our last fieldtrip of the year on Monday. Our destination was the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History.  That is its official name, but it will always be the Junior Museum or the Junior MuZoo to many of us.

We enjoyed a program by a talented volunteer on alligators. 

After lunch and a quick 10 minutes on the cool playground, we went to explore the grounds where the animal habitats are. There is currently an exhibit of metal sculpture dinosaurs made from machine parts. Here are two, but they were all pretty amazing. 

We saw lots of animals, many of whom were in trees. Here is a fox.

A Florida panther was snoozing in his barrel bed. 

Not quite a bed of nails, but the bolts looked pretty uncomfortable to my unfurred back.

Then we got to the bobcats, our school mascot. It was the first time some of my little guys had seen live bobcats.

The otter put on a less-than-energetic water show.

There are the usual gray squirrels, but there is also a small population of white gray squirrels.

There were some wild turkeys.

And this great horned owl was checking  us out through the wire. Would it be insulted if I called it "chicken wire"?

And this last picture shows one of the bald eagles.

There are so many animals --many more than I tried to photograph-- and there is never enough time to see everything within the time constraints of a fieldtrip. We never even got to the farm. Or the caboose. Or some of the nature trails. One thing about going with a new class: it is always new and exciting to them.

There was lots of construction going on as they are putting up an extensive high ropes course that will run over most of the property--you know, zip lines, etc. It is nothing that kindergartners will be able to use, but it looks like a lot of fun for people who like to do that kind of thing. I think B's Boy Scouts will definitely need to check that out when it is done!