Nocturnal Neighbors at the St. Louis Zoo

(Above) Barred Owl

(Above) Firefly light/pen craft

The education classes that the St. Louis Zoo offers are always so much fun and you get to learn really cool stuff about animals! The last class that I attended, which was called Nocturnal Neighbors, taught us about some of the animals that live around us but are only (or mostly) active at night such as toads, bats, owls, fireflies, raccoons, opossums, and Luna moths. We started inside by making some nighttime animal crafts, reading a book about bats, meeting some nocturnal animals, and mimicking bat behavior by pretending to be bats in the rotunda. Then, we went outside and learned how to look for spiders and bats and signal fireflies. We also learned out to make owl calls. You can try this activity at home: Barred owls say, "Who cooks for you, all?" and Great Horned owls deeply say, "Hoot" six times. On our way home, we were given a bat house to build at home. We have built ours already and have applied the first coat of paint on. I'll post photos when it's ready to go outside.

Learning stuff outside (above and below)

(Below) Video of our class learning the Barred and Great Horned Owl calls