
NOTE: All ages are welcome! If you are quarantined or social-distancing, please join us no matter your age.
Some of my favorite kids are stuck at home right now because their schools have closed temporarily. It got me thinking, “What kind of fun project could I do with them when I’m stuck on Whidbey Island in Washington and they are stuck in California?” I decided to make a quarantine zoo. Being in a zoo is a little like being confined to your house, right?

I remember how my son Charlie used to create animals out of all sorts of things. He would save the wax from the snack-sized cheeses and mold animals out of that wax. We kept the finished pieces in the refrigerator so they wouldn’t melt in hot weather. There was an entire herd of yellow and red animals for quite awhile. He also liked to carve animals and shapes out of large carrots. He didn’t use a knife, he used his teeth. It was quite creative but it meant that dinner could take a really long time! The point is, you can make animals out of just about anything so if you don’t have lots of art supplies at your house right now — no worries.

Here’s how it works
For the next month, we will build a zoo together. Here on Whidbey Island school is cancelled for up to 6 weeks. Let’s try this for a month and see how we do. We will start adding animals everyday to our zoo from March 15 till April 15th. The animals can be made of anything. I’ll add a list of ideas below to get you started. Once the animal is finished, you’ll need to take a picture of it with a phone camera. Then an adult with Instagram access will need to post it to their Instagram page with the hashtag #quarantinezoo. To keep kids internet-safe, please just include initials and age. At daily intervals, I’ll collect as many of the animals as I can and post them here on my blog so people can view the entire collection. You can also see the zoo by following the hashtag #quarantinezoo. Are you ready?

Let’s get started
1. Every day for the next month, make an animal. It can be a drawing, a sculpture, a collage — anything you can photograph. If you want, use the list below to find pictures of amazing animals in the PhotoArk. I’ve picked one animal for each day of this monthlong project. If you want to pick a different animal, that is just fine.
2. Photograph the finished animal with a mobile phone.
3. Post the photograph on Instagram and use the hashtag #quarantinezoo. Using this hashtag is very important. It helps me collect all the animals and put them in the zoo. Please include your initials, age, and the name of the animal.
This is my test Instagram post. It has the following information for our zoo.
Name: (initials only)
Age:
Location: (State, Country)
Animal:
Hashtag: #quarantinezoo

Suggested topics
Following is a list of suggested animals for you to create. I picked them from the incredible National Geographic Photo Ark project. You can make any animal you want to but if you get stuck and would like a suggestion, here’s a list:
Day 1 San Jose Cochran Frog
Day 2 Red Lorie
Day 3 Four Horned Antelope
Day 4 Elk River Crayfish
Day 5 Western Spotted Skunk
Day 6 Clark’s Anemonefish
Day 7 Common Death Adder
Day 8 Gray’s Twig
Day 9 Black Necked Aracari
Day 10 Sitatunga
Day 11 Baby Swamp Wallaby
Day 12 Grevy’s Zebra
Day 13 Bewick’s Swan
Day 14 Blue Spotted Pufferfish
Day 15 Turquoise Parrot
Day 16 Nine-banded Armadillo
Day 17 Vervet Monkey
Day 18 Pallid Spiny Soft-shell Turtle
Day 19 Przewalski’s Wild Horse
Day 20 Haussa Genet
Day 21 Short-beaked echidna
Day 22 Florida Deermice
Day 23 Bilby
Day 24 American Rubyspot Damselfly
Day 25 Bobtail squid
Day 26 Southern Tamandua
Day 27 Schmidt’s Red-tailed Guenon
Day 28 Enid Snail
Day 29 Green Pygmy Goose
Day 30 Schneider’s Skink
Day 31 East African Crowned Crane
Day 32 Indian Flying Fox
Ideas for materials to use
Drawing – pencils, crayons, colored pencils, chalk, markers, paper
Painting – watercolor, oils, acrylic, paper, cardboard or canvas
Sculpture – wax, clay, mud, flour dough, wood
Collage – papers, buttons, beads, fabric, ribbon, tape, glue, scissors
Indoor ideas – legos, blocks, wire, pipe cleaners, twist ties, rubber bands, paperclips, straight pins, wine corks, toothpicks, all types of food (beans, seeds, rice, pasta, candy, nuts), thumbtacks
Outdoor ideas – sticks, leaves, rocks, dirt and mud, seed pods, pine cones, shells, sand drawings
- Watercolor, pencil, marker, crayon — any of those will work.
I’m ready to start, are you? Let’s build the Quarantine Zoo! (If you want to start a day early, that’s okay!)
UPDATE: Here is our zoo as of March 30, 2020:
