Spring is here!

Spring has well and truly arrived at Penrith PS and the Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are investigating Spring this week!


Taronga spring babies


San Diego Zoo kids – babies!


Baby animals being cute at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium


Dandelion flower and clock blowing away time lapse


Bee collecting pollen on echinacea flowers in slow motion


Sid the seed by Daniel R Pagan

Eeeek! More puppets – enough, enough?

Chick & Duckling puppets
The chick puppet (above left) was probably originally a duckling, too, but when I found a different duckling (right) a few months later, I sewed the beak of the first one into a point.

Zoo puppets
An assortment of puppets from Taronga Park Zoo’s souvenir shop.

Coat of Arms puppets
Emu and kangaroo puppets: Australia’s coat of arms!

Students at school helped to display the (now-huge) puppet collection!

Puppets group

Puppets group 2

Now we just need to complete that puppet theatre.

More about frogs

After experiencing many versions of the fable, “The exploding frog“, our Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are studying factual information about frogs. These Youtube video clips (below) will support their learning:


Inside Taronga’s Corroboree frog conservation container
(with Michael McFadden, Mrs Brisco’s son-in-law)


Corroboree frog update from Mt Kosciuszko


Tree frog jumping


Frog swimming


Green treefrog calling


Frog song

Now I feel old

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had renewed my motivation to go back to Taronga Park Zoo soon to attempt to recapture some views of the exhibits originally from my childhood photo album of b/w photos from 1968 and 1971. The result is here:

The original slideshow, of b/w material alone, is here:

I hope other educators find a use for this material! We tend to revisit “Old and New” in numerous HSIE topics.

This is cute: the Google Street View trike visits Taronga Park Zoo! (below)


Google Street View trike at Taronga Zoo

Zoo nostalgia

These old b/w photographs, taken during excursions to Taronga Park Zoo in 1968 and 1971, demonstrate how little visitors could manage to see between the bars of the old enclosures. The elephants’ view, through the window of the old concrete “temple”, is more recent. When the new elephant enclosure was unveiled in 2007, a static exhibit inside the “temple” showed their original environment, complete with a “saddle” for elephant rides.

Now I’m motivated to go back to the zoo soon and recapture as many pics, in colour, as possible. A few enclosures (and the floral clock) are still in the same locations but, thankfully, look very different today.

PS: I did it!