Fishing and Crabbing at Children's Museum!

     Senior Harbor Educator Erin here to tell you all about my first week at Children's Museum! We started off the week setting our crab traps and baiting our hooks so we could catch any crabs or fish that came our way! We also set up our coloring station where we quickly learned that it was too hot for the crayons to be out because they began melting! Ah, Messy!

Teaching a group of kids how to fish outside of the Children's Museum! 

  After we rescued the crayons we began to catch green crabs and a few fish (perch to be exact!). We caught so many green crabs on Monday and the junior program assistants were so excited to teach kids all about them! We caught big ones, small ones, ones with no claws, ones with huge claws, ones with one claw, and some with barnacles on their backs! The crabs with barnacles growing on their back were great educators because we could show everyone who stopped by how some of the animals in the harbor interact with one another as well as with their habitat.

Sam showing some of the kids the spider crab we caught! 

  On Tuesday we caught our first spider crab which was the biggest crab we had caught yet! We were able to show everyone the difference between green crabs and spider crabs and no one wanted to hold the spider crab because he was so large and scary looking! We were quickly able to show everyone that even though spider crabs may appear scary they are gentle and easy to pick up because they don't have the spikes on its shell like the green crabs do!

   Friday was free admission day at the Children's Museum so we had so many people stop by to fish with us and explore the harbor! Unfortunately it began to rain but that didn't stop us! We grabbed all of our gear and crabs and headed under the tent so we could continue showing everyone waiting to enter the museum about the cool crabs! The rain stopped in the afternoon and everyone was extremely happy because then we were able to go out and fish again!!

  The first week of programming went so well and I cannot wait for the weeks to come!

Come visit us outside the Children's Museum!

Erin