School-wide curriculum initiatives are complex fields of activity, held together by a cast of heterogeneous actors who put diverse discourses to work in their everyday efforts to shape their work. This paper draws upon qualitative data collected across an 18-month period in a regional Australian primary school that, since the beginning of 2012, has implemented a school-wide science specialism. In this paper, we focus in detail on how one feature of the initiative--classroom animals--played out as the science specialism was enacted. The data provide glimpses into the practice of the curriculum initiative from a range of viewpoints. We explore the discursive positioning of the classroom animals, and the construction of teachers' work and student learning in relation to this. Tensions are explored between views of the initiative "from above"--from the perspective of the school leadership and key advocates of the initiative--and views "from the ground"--presented by classroom teachers as they reflect on their encounters with the animals. We discuss the divergent ways in which teacher practice can be constructed in relation to curriculum innovation and advocate practice-based theories as providing a generative lens for understanding and supporting teachers' innovative curriculum work and for understanding teaching practice more generally as an innovative, creative and productive undertaking.