The Santa Ana Zoo serves as a classroom for these students

Raymond Ramos had never been to a zoo. But on a recent Tuesday he was a zoologist, studying animals and science.

“The animals like to eat,” the 5-year-old kindergartner learned. He said he especially liked “the animal with a big nose,” referring to an anteater.

Raymond and 407 other Carver Elementary School students are part of a pilot partnership with the Santa Ana Zoo at Prentice Park that launched in January and runs until the end of the school year.  Each week a different grade level visits the zoo.

“This ain’t your grandma’s field trip,” joked Stacy Kline, program specialist with the Santa Ana Unified School District. Students are collecting data, she said, and figuring out potential career paths. The program is designed to meet the state’s science standards.

Monkeys, camels, dung beetles and reptiles and their enclosures provide real-world habitats for the roaming scientists. Teachers, who helped shape the curriculum, prod the students’ curiosity: What eco system is this? What kind of fauna do you see here?

When they passed a closed aviary, they learned about bird flu.

The budding field scientists enthusiastically recorded their findings in their notebooks before going to a classroom at the zoo for discussion.

“I love this. We’re walking into a real world of biomes and biodiversity and different food chains, and observing them in action,” said fifth-grade teacher Aurora Esquivel, who has been with the district for 25 years. “This gives students a connection to the planet.”