Charlie's field trip

I decided to volunteer for Charlie's field trip to the Cabrillo Aquarium and Museum recently (May 22).  I did not get on the bus which I later found out was a really good idea because the bus is really noisy! Ha!

The beach is right across the street from the Aquarium!  And who knew that the Aquarium is free as well.  Looks like we will be here during the summer holidays a lot :-)  And by the way, it is a gloomy day. We are finding out that it's called "May Grey" and "June Gloom" around SoCal:

It's not a very big museum but I actually did enjoy it.  Just enough for the kids to see and touch:

And oh, we need to take advantage of the free Red Trolley too! It will take us to the San Pedro fish market and also the battleship and a couple other sites.  Did I already mention FREE??!

The kids are all excited when we arrive.  I have these 4 kids in my group - 2 boys and 2 girls, including Charlie.  Piece of cake, right??!

I have to say, the kids did behave very nicely!

Can you spot the crab???

These were the most disgusting snails I have ever seen. To get to their food through the slate, they pump blood into this tube which makes it longer so the can reach the dead fish at the bottom of the tank.  YUUUUUCKKKK!!!!

Photo op with Charlie!  There is another group of students in the background behind the yellow tape. The Aquarium is expecting over a 1000 kids today!!!

After a quick preview in the auditorium on what the kids might see today, we set off to the tide pools:

 So glad no one slipped!  The rocks were so slippery.  Kids were so busy looking at animals/sea creatures:

And then, after the tide pools we moved indoors into the lab.  Lots of microscopes were set up for the kids. On a side note, I got to hold up a fairly large sea urchin. I had to actually put my two palms together. It was slightly ticklish as it's spines would move. Too bad I didn't take that photo. At this point, I am not sure if the kids are having more fun or me :-P

There were other things to touch too like sea stars and shark egg cases. Who knew shark eggs were in these hard cases:

I am so glad none of the boys decided to pull a hermit crab out of its shell:

And finally, the kids got to hatch their own grunion fish!  These are small silver colored fishes that come out of the sea water, beach themselves and lay eggs underneath the sand!  I think there is a grunion festival coming up in a week or so, except it is really late at night. Might be a fun thing to do if we can keep everyone up!  Anyhow, each kid got some eggs in a glass jar and they had to swirl the water around to simulate how the waves might be on the beach.  Within minutes, the eggs actually hatch!

How cool is that!!!   There are some baby grunions to the top (and slightly right) of the jar:

What a fun day!!! Charlie actually did talk about this experience during his presentation of "Most Memorable Kindergarten Moment" last week. So glad he enjoyed it!

With a few minutes to spare, I went into the gift shop (I just couldn't resist!).  I picked up a couple of reusable wooden/bamboo straws - yes, trying to do our part in saving the environment.  On the way out, I took some photos of a couple of statues.  I have yet to figure out who these people are:

This one was right by the entrance.  Must be someone important!!!