How can teachers take a traditional field trip and turn it into a component of a rich learning unit? The author found success in connecting a science, technology, and design class to the experiences students engaged in during a recent trip to a zoo. While students were focused on creating an enrichment toy for animals, the true enrichment was in the learning experienced by the students. The trip was a stand-alone event in that it included no specific connection to the learning goals of the science, technology, and design class. With revamped thinking on how to leverage the learning going on in the classroom, the author was able to make explicit connections that extended beyond community and engaged the students with their understanding of the engineering design cycle and with the science concepts of the senses, especially sound. Connecting to earlier studies on the five senses during the first month of school, students were ready to dive deeper into exploring sound and applying their learning through the engineering design cycle. First-grade students approached the trip to the zoo primed to identify how animals use their senses to understand the world around them.