Roundhouse Aquarium Fieldtrip

First, we touched the sea urchins and sea stars in the touch tanks.  

We had some free time to explore the sea creatures and puzzles and other activities that are part of the Roundhouse Aquarium.

We got to play with puzzles.

We played with the animals that make up the food chain.

We also learned about the food chain.  

The orca eats the shark.  

Then the shark eats the seal.  

The seal eats the tuna.

The tuna eats the fish.  

The fish eats the crab.

The crab eats the plankton.  The plankton gets his food from the sun.

The sun makes everything grow! 

We are having such a great time being the food chain!

The sun grows the plants, the plankton eat the plants, the crab eats the plankton, the fish eats the crab, the tuna eats the fish, the seal eats the tuna, the shark eats the seal, and the orca eats the shark.   

And that's the food chain!  

Then we got to handle sea animals from the touch tanks!

Next we got a sea urchin and felt it.  

We also got a sand dollar.  

We held a sea cucumber!

This student got one year of good luck for holding the sea cucumber.  

If you kiss a sea cucumber you get good luck until you are 13 years old!

Allegedly, you get five years good luck if you kiss the sea cucumber!  It tasted salty!  

This student held a sea star!

Last, we went down to the beach for our hands-on experiments!

Captain Clean-up was there to help us learn if something was trash or recycling!

Plastic does not belong on the beach!

We sorted stuff on the beach into three containers:  Trash--stuff made by man like plastic! Natural,--stuff from nature like rocks, feathers and sticks.  And Sea stuff like kelp and seaweed.

The second bin has natural stuff and the last bin is full of sea weed.  

Gross!  This stuff is man-made trash!

Our final experiment, was we used scientific tools like binoculars to observe the sea creatures and the ocean habitat!

Oops, almost forgot, we even got to handle sand crabs!  

Did you know that the sand crab is the only animal that moves backward instead or forward!  Yup!

Don't worry, we set them free!

The best part was deciding whether we would take our shoes off to do our beach experiments!  I took mine off, I love the feel of sand on my feet!

This is the fabulous Juan, one of the teachers at the Roundhouse Aquarium!  Thank you Juan!

And then we went home. What a great day!