By now I’m sure you’re aware of the digital content that zoos are providing daily. The Cincinnati Zoo was the first one to the party, gaining national recognition for their “Home Safari” daily at 3pm Eastern. Since then, a multitude of zoos have followed suit with their own renditions. These include “Virtual Classrooms”, “Z-Learning”, and “Bring the Zoo to You”. On top of this live content, most zoos added live streams to webcams of their zoo animals (we’ve compiled for you here). We’ve also done our part by providing Educational Materials, including sharing a list of the online resources provided by zoos. But with so much content to consume, how do you know where to start? Which content is worth going back and viewing? Have no fear, we have you covered. We’ve sorted through the materials to bring you our list of the best digital zoo content.
First and foremost we should note that our opinions are obviously subjective. We have three daughters, ages 4 thru 8, and I think that weighs pretty heavily into what we perceive to be the best content. Also, with so many zoos pitching in to provide content for so long, overlap has started to happen. This tends to prevent certain animal activities from standing out, as they perhaps are starting to be overdone. Despite that, we’ve found several videos and activities that we believe to be some of the best content so far from zoos that your kids will enjoy.
New York Aquarium Zoodle
from the Zoodle Video
On April 11, the New York Aquarium shared what I hope to be the first in a series of “Zoodle” videos. This 11-minute video gives you step-by-step instructions on how to draw an African Penguin. This was really great for kids because it included very simple steps, mainly using small lines. The opening seconds of the video show you what colors you need for the drawing, and the time spacing on the video is well done. Still, the video reminds you to pause if needed so you can catch up. Our three daughters all did this together, and both our eight-year-old and five-year-old finished with drawings that resemble the penguin. It’s worth a try, and hopefully they come out with more of these.
Exercise with Wanda at the Blank Park Zoo
Stress from staying home for weeks hits us all differently. For our kids, they went through a series of nights were they were waking up having nightmares. One of the ways we tried to cope with this was doing some yoga or moving activity before bed. The Blank Park Zoo has put together several movement videos, including yoga. Our favorite is the first “Activity Time with Wanda” the zoo produced on March 25. This one includes some basic stretching and exercises. They have since produced several more that include hop-scotch, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”, and limbo. The same instructor has also done some family-friendly yoga videos for the zoo as well.
Sloth Bear Digging Race with Omaha Zoo Instructors
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo has a lot of good videos and activities on their “Do the Zoo at Home” website. Of the video, one of our favorites was this one where the instructors lead you in a racing activity. In this activity you use your ‘claws’ to pull ‘termites’ out of the ‘dirt’. While our girls enjoyed this video and activity, another activity they enjoyed was the pygmy goat activity, which had us bouncing all over our basement!
Tortoise Racing at the Kansas City Zoo
The Kansas City Zoo has put out a series of videos covering a range of topics. My favorite is probably the tortoise races. As mentioned in the intro, content is getting duplicated a lot (that’s why you won’t see any videos of penguins meandering through zoos in this list). But tortoise racing isn’t something I’ve seen done often. The zoo initially posted a tortoise race a few weeks ago, and uploaded this newest video on April 14. This is a fun one for the family to watch, and if you’re really that deprived for making a friendly wager, this might satisfy that itch! If you’re more interested in educational videos, they have one on the difference between alligators and crocodiles. Turns out, the difference isn’t that one will see you after a while, and the other will see you later!
Goat Stampede at the Riverbanks Zoo
While most zoos are rotating staff members in for their digital content, Milo at the Riverbanks Zoo is doing selfie videos daily. He’s a natural on camera and has been in many different habitats. Our favorite is probably his trip to the farm, where he hangs out with the goats. But first, the goats are unleashed from their barn to their hangout area in a goat stampeded. The stampede takes place at the 6:30 mark on the video above, but the zoo released a shortened video of the just the stampeded, and you can find that here.
Story Time with the Lorikeets at the Kansas City Zoo
Although I was trying to limit this to one item per zoo, I needed to put another on here from the Kansas City Zoo. They read “Rainbow Fish” to the lorikeets, and our kids absolutely loved it! Our oldest is a big fan of birds, so seeing a zoo staff member covered in lorikeets added to the thrill of this one.
Rico the Porcupine on Cincinnati Zoo Home Safari
So as mentioned in the intro, the Cincinnati Zoo was pretty much the one who started this whole thing. Their first video was of Fiona the Hippo, who has become their unofficial zoo mascot. All of the Cincinnati Home Safaris are good, and you can check them all out on their YouTube Channel. I asked our girls what their favorite one was, and they said “Rico the Porcupine”, which occurred on March 17. The video was followed by a craft where they made their own Rico (see picture near top of the article).
There are many other good ones out there, but hopefully this list gives you a glimpse of some of the programming that is available. If you’d like additional resources, check out the links below:
Educational Materials created by us at Zoo With Us
Educational Materials (and videos) created by zoos
Coloring Pages created by zoos
Word Searches and other puzzles created by zoos
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