The NEW Zoo & Adventure Park held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Discovery Zone, June 13, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The NEW Zoo & Adventure Park held a ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday for its latest attraction, designed to offer kids more opportunities for educational fun.
The Discovery Zone brings several new features to the NEW Zoo, including a nature playground and an outdoor classroom. It also features new habitats of animals that used to live behind the scenes, several photo opportunities and interactive games and activities encouraging free play and exploration.
Graphics on display within the space will also help connect guests to the NEW Zoo’s wildlife and animal residents.
“This is something that we’ve really wanted to do for a long time,” said Education Coordinator Angela Kawski-Kroening. She said the nature playground, in particular, is a unique experience children can’t find anywhere else.
“Everybody’s used to having regular playgrounds — the manufactured plastic equipment where it’s you go down the slide, you climb up the tower, you hang from the monkey bars. It’s not a lot of imagination,” Kawski-Kroening said.
Nature play is really all on the kids to explore, to do what they want. They get to choose if they’re jumping, swinging, climbing. They’ve got things to touch and manipulate. It’s something that’s so important for them to have that unstructured play.
The Discovery Zone was made possible by a grant from the Advancing Conservation through Empathy (ACE) for Wildlife Network, along with donations and volunteer work by several community organizations.
There is no extra charge to explore the Discovery Zone; it is covered within the cost of admission to the NEW Zoo & Adventure Park.
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