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Emma Nicholls

Preschoolers feel the shell of an Ornamental Box Turtle

The Mini Mustang Preschool hosted reptile expert Michael Levins from Crosstown Exotics to teach kids more about the reptile species.

“I’ll try to tell kids the habitat, what it eats, and how big it gets,” Wildlife educator Michael Levins said. “I try to gear things towards the age group.”

Crosstown Exotics is a reptile and bug show that travels all across the Chicago-land area, priding themselves on providing hands-on education for all ages. When Levins shows reptiles and bugs to college classes for vet tech programs, he adapts the lesson to provide more in depth information such as the level of reverse osmosis occurring. Levin tweaks his teaching style depending on the age range. At the preschool level, a lot of time is spent simply acclimating the students to being around as well as interacting with the animals.

“I think a lot of kids are just showing them they don’t need to be scared, you know, because some of them are nervous right off the bat,” Levins said. “Once they see it, you know, [they see] it’s not so bad.”

In addition to acclimating to the animals, the students receive an experience unlike any that they could get anywhere else. Levins compares what he does to going to a zoo, where you can look but not touch.

“You see a lot of these animals on TV or at the zoo, like, oh, it’d be cool to hold that, touch that,” Levins said. “Then you actually get to see some of those things that, like, I feel like it’s kind of like a cool experience to show kids stuff that they might not have otherwise got to see.”