Every Wednesday afternoon the Piers Park Marine Educators and I head up to Winthrop Beach. Each week, kids aged 4-10 come by with their parents and check out the tidepools. We always find all sorts of interesting things! From lobster claws to barnacles to the biggest blue mussels I've ever seen, Winthrop Beach has it all. When we first arrived, the tide was very high, so we decided to take a walk along the beach and check out the wrackline. Kids spotted lots of washed-up, dead crabs, and I helped them identify green crabs, red rock crabs, and Asian Shore crabs. Eventually, the tide went low enough for tide pools to form, and everyone waded into the water, carefully lifting up rocks as we went so that we wouldn't crush the little crabs that would scurry out.
Although at the beginning, some children were a bit afraid of holding the little critters, by the end of the day, there wasn't a kid in sight who didn't want to be the first one to pick up a crab. This Wednesday, our last session, we had a record 16 kids come to Winthrop Beach. Hopefully, next year, we'll have even more!-Pat
No comments:
Post a Comment