Zoo Coloring Pages

• African savanna: lions, giraffes, elephants and zebras, whose stripes are different on every animal
• Primate house: monkeys, plus gorillas and orangutans, which are apes and have no tails
• Reptile house: snakes, tortoises, lizards and crocodiles, which can't stick out their tongues
• Bird area: flamingos, parrots, peacocks and penguins
• Pools and rivers: otters, sea lions and hippos, which spend most of the day in the water to keep cool
• Asian forest: tigers, pandas and red pandas
• People at the zoo: keepers, vets, the ticket gate and the zoo train

Print a few pages before a zoo trip and turn them into a checklist. Kids tick off each animal they find, then color it afterward from memory or from the photos you took. At school, sort the finished pages by continent or by what the animals eat. A zebra page is a good discussion starter, since scientists still debate why zebras have stripes. One leading idea is that the stripes confuse biting flies.

Real colors are worth looking up. A hippo is gray-brown with pink around the eyes, ears and belly. A flamingo is pink with a black-tipped bill. A giraffe's tongue is dark purple. Male lions have a mane and females don't. An ostrich is the largest bird in the world and lays the largest egg. Gorillas beat their chests with cupped hands, which makes the sound carry. Small details like these turn a coloring sheet into a short science lesson, and they give kids something to tell you about while they color.