Activities for Kids

Bring the Zoo to your Online Classroom

Kia ora kaiako, want your students to visit the Zoo from your online classroom? Talk to us about a virtual Zoo Learning Session! From webinars with your class to interactive activities with our Educators, we are keen to work with you to make a virtual Zoo experience part of your students’ learning during this time. Contact learning@wellingtonzoo.com

Draw-along Activity

Wellington Zoo is a proud partner of Weta Digital, who have been supporting the Zoo, and our community, for nearly a decade. Together we have brought the fascinating lives of Chimpanzees to our local community and the world.

We are excited to share with you Weta Digital’s Creative Art Director, Gino Acevedo. Gino has created a special draw-along activity video for you to create your own detailed Chimpanzee mask at home. Gino is an artist extraordinaire who has worked with Weta Workshop and Weta Digital for over 20 years on major blockbuster films including Avatar, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings films and many others. As the Creative Art Director for the Planet of The Apes series, and a big fan of our primate relatives, he knows a thing or two about how to draw them!

Join Gino in this special video to learn how to draw and colour your very own Chimpanzee mask, and learn some of our favorite facts about our relatives along the way.

Download Chimp Mask

Chimp Black and White (918 KB)

Enrichment for your pet

At Wellington Zoo we give the animals a lot of enrichment to keep them happy, healthy, and keep their lives interesting. It’s the animal equivalent of having books to read, TV to watch, games, sports or musical instruments to play.

But it isn’t just something that happens at the Zoo. While we are all at home, we can make enrichment for our animals as well! Making enrichment is fun for us and fun for our pets. We can get really creative and make some exciting and challenging activities that they will love.

Pupsicles

How to make dog ice blocks or 'pupsicles'

Ingredients:

½ carrot
Hot water
Marmite
Plastic container

Method:

Chop the carrot into pieces - make sure you ask an adult to help you
Place them in a container and fill with hot water - ask an adult for help first
Stir in a dab of Marmite so it dissolves through the whole ice block
Put it in the freezer to set for about 4 hours
When frozen, remove ice block from container - if it's stuck, try running it under the tap
Give it to your dog and see what they think!

Be sure to check with an adult to see if your pet has any known allergies first.

Animal Behaviour

Now that you’re spending a lot of time at home, you have the chance to be like a Zoo Keeper! Use this activity to observe the animals at your home just like the Keepers do at Wellington Zoo; you might find out their favourite sleeping spot, when they like to be awake, or even who they like to spend the most time with!

Download our animal behaviour activity and see what trends you can find in your animal’s behaviour.

Download resource (553 KB)

Outside My Window

Wellington Zoo is lucky enough to care for some incredible animals and it’s important for our Keepers to get to know the individuals they look after. This means our Keepers spend a lot of time studying their animals and getting to know them, to learn how they usually behave and why.

So until you’re able to come to the Zoo to meet our animals, we have created a resource to help you observe the animals in your own backyard!

Download Resource (2.7 MB)

Craft Challenge

While the animals at Wellington Zoo are being well taken care of by our amazing Zoo Keepers, why not create some zoo friends at home? Have yourself a crafternoon and make your favourite Wellington Zoo animal (or any other). You could even design a new habitat for your animal, or create an entire zoo! Remember they need somewhere warm to sleep, somewhere to eat and drink, and somewhere to play.

We’ve come up with a few suggestions to get you started, based on some of the amazing animals at Wellington Zoo!

Download Craft Challenge Ideas (553 KB)

Pen Pals

Get in touch with the Zoo team

Tamariki, Wellington Zoo wants to hear from you! Do you know some cool facts about Cheetahs you’re just racing to share? Are you itching to find out what Sasa our Sun Bear has for supper? Then why not become Pen Pals with one of our Zoo Keepers!

We love hearing from you and we also LOVE sharing the pictures you have drawn with our animals.

So take a picture of your art work, email us a letter, or send us a video with your questions to learning@wellingtonzoo.com. One of our super star Zoo Keepers will read out some of your letters to your favourite animals!