We got a reply from Paignton Zoo!

Paignton Zoo answered all of our animal questions; did you know Zebras have at least 32 stripes? Gemma projected the letter onto our big whiteboard so everyone could see it; we were all so pleased & excited.

Paignton also sent us a question in their reply “Are a Zebra’s stripes on its skin or its coat?” We set about trying to figure out the answer & discussed which one we thought it might be. To help us answer their question, we decided to make our own play-dough Zebras. We took turns mixing all the ingredients together & rolled out the dough using different tools to manipulate it into different shapes. We counted all the stripes & talked about the different patterns we could make with them.

We then decorated our Zebras with googly eyes & different coloured beads & all discussed times we had been to the zoo & our different experiences there. Once we had finished our zebra models, we sang some animal-themed songs & later found out that if you shaved a zebra it would be completely black & that their white stripes only appear on their coat! Wow! Thank you Paignton Zoo, we are working on our reply to you!