After visiting Naturalist Nancy's llama farm, the WISE kids had yet another chance to take part in some llama drama. Naturalist Julie presents a fun and educational nature program for preschoolers every Thursday at the park with stories, crafts and often there are guest critter visitors. Guess what the focus of this last installment of the summer program was? Yep. Llamas.
The story for this week was Is Your Mama a Llama? and the Wise Kids each took the role of one of the baby animals in the book and helped to present it to the crowd. We arrived about an hour before story time so the kids could learn their parts.
Here's a little rehearsal shot:
It was a gorgeous morning and can I just say that I love being in that park! Love it! Anyway....
Down at the Camp Interstate shelter, the story timers began to arrive and Julie began with the story, all the while keeping mum about the special animal visitor that would be making an appearance.
The kids did great with reading their parts and there was lots of audience participation as well. After the story Julie talked a little about what the WISE kids group was and the special field trip they had taken the day before. She really talked up how cute the llamas were and then told the group that if they would like to meet a llama, that they should slowly and quietly turn around in their seats and take a look.
This is the what they saw coming across the field behind them:
It's Nancy and Countach!
It was really quite a dramatic moment for all the kids and parents as well. Nancy talked about some llama basics, including the bad reputation they have for spitting. She emphasized that they are very gentle animals and spitting is simply a natural defense for them usually against other animals, not people. So stop all the llama hatin'!
Everyone had a chance to come up and meet Countach and feed him a little grain. He was a perfect gentleman.
It was a great way to wrap up summer Nature Story Time and the WISE Kids, who participated in the program themselves for so long, were pretty proud to have a hand in it.
4 comments:
Looks like you all had an awesome time hanging at Interstate! Believe it or not, we have never participated in the programs there (crazy, I know, when we live so close to such a beautiful place with those kinds of resources offered to home educators). I will have to call their office and find out when those programs are scheduled so that we can come check it out sometime. Thanks for blogging about it. :)
I miss Interstate, especially Julie. What a great day!
Angie-I mentioned to Julie after our trip to the llama farm that I was taking Ben to mow for some friends who moved up north. She asked who, so I told her Angie T... and she said "Angie with Finn and Charlotte!? I was wondering why I hadn't seen them in so long." So she misses seeing you guys, too!
Hannah-Nature Storytime is over for the summer, as is the graduate program WISE Kids, but will resume in January. It is always Thursday mornings at 10:00. We usually at the Ice Age center in the winter,but Julie always tries to spend a little time outdoors exploring with the kids.
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