Meet the animals

There are lots of new animal friends to meet, touch and care for at Little Explorers Nature Center Preschool. Animals are a great deal of fun for children. It is something new to get excited about. There is also a great deal we can learn about animals: how they change, what they eat, how they protect themselves or how they communicate. Animals provide many sensory stimulations like touch (furry, soft, slippery, and cold) or sound (the croak of a frog or the ba of a sheep). In addition to the class lessons about the animals, children will also get some special time helping to care for these wonderful animals. It's going to be an experience that they will remember for a long time.

So... let’s take a quick peak at some of the animals at Little Explorers Nature Center Preschool!

Outdoor Animals

Chavez is our biggest animal at Little Explorers and stands about 15 1/2 hands tall (a hand is about 4 inches). Chavez is a registered paint and is part quarter horse and part thoroughbred. He is a very gentle horse and loves to visit with children.

Vienna is our beautiful palomino horse. Smaller than Chavez, she stands about 14 hands tall. We hope that Vienna might some day bring us a new foal.

Macy and Banana Muffin are our 2 fluffy Little Explorers Llama's. They come to us from the Grand Harvest herd in Mt. Horeb. Macy (spotted) and Banana Muffin (brown) are both Llama minis and are slightly smaller than regular Llama's but bigger than alpaca's. As friendly as they are furry, our two Llama's are both female and may also bear babies in the next few years.

Mopsy and Flopsy are our Holland Lop bunnies. Both are female and only about 3 months old (as of Dec 2007). These bunnies are super soft and snuggly and are wonderful to hold and pet.

Some other outside animals that will soon be coming to little Explorers include:

Sheep

Goats

Ducks

Classroom Observable Animal Habitats.

Sugar and Spice are our 2 sugar gliders that take up residence in a habitat in our Rainforest Classroom (4's). Sugar and spice are a boy/girl pair that comes to us from a breeder in Austin Texas and we hope will eventually breed to create a family of sugar gliders. Sugar gliders can actually fly through the air so we built them an 11'x8' habitat to give them lots of space to fly and swing.

Jaba is our box turtle that lives in an aquarium in the Wetlands classroom (Toddlers). Jaba doesn't move real fast but is very colorful turtle and loves basking on his heated rock.

Valentine is our pretty blue beta fish. She lives in a mirage in the Sahara classroom (infants).

Other classroom animals coming to Little Explorers Include:

Dart frogs (non-poisonous)

Geckos

Hedge Hog

Richardson ground squirrels

And many more to come!

***All interaction is highly supervised and safety will be always our foremost concern. All animals at the facility are docile and gentle. We have a great deal of fun interacting with the animals but only in a completely safe way.

We will add more animals to this page as we confirm their attendance at Little Explorers Learning Center.