Q is for Quokka

This week's animal was the shy, little Quokka endemic to Rottnest Island, off Western Australia. The Quokka is a small marsupial similar in appearance to a Wallaby and it is highly active at night, making it a nocturnal Australian mammal.
 
We currently have four Quokkas in the Growing Wild precinct of Melbourne Zoo, which the children went on an exploration to try and find. We came across two of the Quokkas which eventually hopped off to hide in amongst the bushes...but we did spot them at least!
 
To help the children gain an understanding about marsupials, the sensory tub was set up to include a variety of different textures of real fur that the children could touch and a number of plush toys such as a Koala, Wombat and Kangaroo to play with. Magnifying glasses and wooden letters were also included to assist the children in their explorations.

 
As with the Brush Turkey, there were no picture story books found about Quokkas. So we used 'Wanda Wallaby Finds Her Bounce' written by Jonathan Emmett because of the similarity of the Quokka and the Wallaby in body size, locomotion, rearing their young in a pouch and body covering. The is a gorgeous little story about a Wallaby called Wanda that goes looking for her 'bounce' only to discover it after being scared away by a sneaky Crocodile! This story is fantastic in helping to develop the concepts of senses such as what does it feel like, look like, smell like etc.
 
To further enhance the children's knowledge of a marsupial, we sang a made up song about the Quokka to the tune of 'The Wheels on the Bus', see below.

The Quokka looks like a small wallaby,

a small wallaby, a small wallaby.

The Quokka looks like a small wallaby,

with long brown fur.

The Quokka likes to sleep all through the day,

through the day, through the day.

The Quokka likes to sleep all through the day,

and wake up at night.

The Quokka loves to eat green grass and leaves,

grass and leaves, grass and leaves,

The quokka loves to eat green grass and leaves,

and the baby drinks milk.

 

We then moved on to make our weekly craft activity, which was a mother and her pop-up joey. We needed an animal template printed onto white card (with a slit on the mother's belly for the pop-up joey), crayons, joggle eyes, a felt, love-heart shaped nose, small lengths of string for the whiskers and leaves and twigs to make the Quokka a home. We made the mother's pouch out of faux fur bought from Spotlight and cut into a semi-circle and used Supatac to glue it down (make sure that the top of the pouch is left un-glued or the joey won't be able to pop out). After piecing everything together, we glued the joey onto a popsicle stick and placed it into the slit on the mother's belly. The children were then able to hide the joey in the mother's pouch and pop it out when they wanted to.

Although we didn't have a tactile experience of a live Quokka, our Friends Of The Zoo Volunteers (FOTZ) were kind enough to lend us a taxidermy Quokka for the children to touch. This experience generated many questions, the most common question being..."Is it real?" This became an excellent teaching opportunity to talk about the end of an animal's life cycle and how the Zoo can sometimes use these animals to help children learn more about them.

Although the Quokka is not a well-recognised animal, it was important that children be introduced to a variety of different animals in the program, not just the cute and well-known animals, but also those that are not always seen or heard about...just like the Quokka.