Эссе My favourite word is Zoo

 Эссе

My favourite  word is  Zoo

                                                    Zharinov Anton Form 6 A

                                                   School № 145

                                                    Teacher  Kuminova E. I.

Saint Petersburg

2014

      A zoo is a place where various birds, animals and reptiles are kept.  It has great attraction particularly for the children. A visit to a zoo gives us both information and entertainment. We come to learn about the rare species. We take a full round of it and enjoy ourselves a lot. We are happy to see all those animals with our own eyes about which we read in books. The memory of the visit still fills me with thrill and excitement.

 Giraffes, elephants, monkeys too. I like to visit them at the Zoo.

Little squirrels in a tree. Come and take this nut from me.

I took some photos.

Who are you looking at ?  You are looking at Me !

Beauty and the Beast

Hanging around

But what is Zoo I wonder. A zoo (short for zoological park or zoological garden, also called a menagerie) is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred. The term zoological garden refers to zoology, the study of animals. It comes from the Greek zōon (ζῷον, "animal") and lógos (λóγος, "study"). The oldest known zoological collection was revealed during excavations at Hierakonpolis, Egypt in 2009 B.C. menagerie. The oldest zoo in the world still in existence is the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria. The Kazan Zoo, the first zoo in Russia was founded in 1806 by the Professor of Kazan State University Karl Fuchs. The abbreviation "zoo" was first used of the London Zoological Gardens, which opened for scientific study in 1828 and to the public in 1857.The number of major animal collections open to the public around the world now exceeds 1,000, around 80 percent of them in cities. Nowadays  Zoo as a noun has different meanings:1. Zoological gardens: take the children to the zoo. 2. Park ( usually public) in which many kinds of animals are kept for exhibition. 3. A facility where wild animals are housed for exhibition.  The Synonyms: menagerie, zoological garden. Words and phrases that have a meaning related to zoo:  (13 results). Often used in the same context: animal, beast, elephant, moo, zebra. Words related by part of speech : nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs. Words and phrases that rhyme with zoo: (626 results) 1syllable: moo, shoo. 2 syllables: bamboo. 3syllables: Katmandu, kangaroo. 4 syllables: kalamazoo. 5 syllables: giant kangaroo. 6 syllables: giant timber bamboo. 7 syllables: analytical review. More ideas: words ending with "zoo": kalamazoo , kazoo. 

      It is interesting to know that words and phrases are pronounced exactly the same as Zoo: (3 results) 1 syllable: xue, zue. I found that words can be pronounced similarly to zoo: (34 results)  soo, sue, zue.

      Moreover, it was great to discover a lot of interesting information about animals size, colour, skin, speed, weight, ages:

1. They can live: turtle-180 years, elephant-100 years, crocodile-40 years, camel-25 years.

2. What do the animals say? The dog says wow. The cat says meow. The frog says croak.

3. Assemblies of groups: a flight of birds, a pride of lions, a school of whales.

4. Male: bull, tiger, bear.  Female: cow, tigress, she- bear.

       Do you know proverbs? All cats are grey in the dark. Every dog is a lion at home.

       Just for fun, a joke. A visitor in the Zoo saw a lion and a ship together in one cage. He was very much surprised and asked the keeper, “ Don’t they quarrel with each other?”- “ Well, they sometimes do,” answered the keeper. “And what do you do then?” the visitor wanted to know. “ Then we buy a new sheep.”

      Guess Who? It is yellow in colour and as tall as can be . It can eat the leaves from a very tall tree.

       In the English lessons we sing songs “Songbirds”, “To the Zoo”. “Yankee doodle”, “Butterflies”, ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’, “Bingo”, “Five little monkeys”.

   Nursery and counting  rhymes, the laughing tests, puzzles, poems, fables, stories and books about animals make me feel excited. Rhyme zone is  fantastic!  

Today when I was at the Zoo I saw the mother Kangaroo.

Inside her skin she has a pocket, she  put her baby there to rock it.  

There is a huge collection of children's songs and funny rhymes about zoo animals.

     I’ve read fairy tales “ Kenny’s monkey”, “The rabbit and the wolf’” in my childhood. But the story “How the animals get to the Zoo” and “ Maugly” by R. Kipling  impressed me greatly. Funny animal activities have much fun: hidden pets, crosswords, word snake, jumbled words. I can’t stop watching  cartoons Mickey Mouse by W. Disney or “Just so Stories”. That is why my favourite word is a  Zoo. Isn't it informative and educative ! In a conclusion, I’d like to say,” We should protect animals!”

Sources:

1. Verkhoglyad, V. A. English rhymes for children.- M.: Prosveshchenie.- 2006.- 80 p.
2. Discover our amazing world with CLIL Readers.- Express Publishing.- 2014.- 24 p.
3. Hornby, A.S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Volume 2/ A.S. Hornby. – M.: Русский язык, 1982. – 509 с.
4. Learn and play at the English lessons.- M: Drofa.- 2008.- 160 p.

 5. www.fabulousfirstgrade.50megs.com/zoo.html

 6. http://en.wikipedia.org                7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Zoo