Aquarium Educational Outreach

View our Partnerships
See student project Information
Cabrillo Aquarium Staff

The purpose of the Outreach is the very next logical step in expanding the aquarium. We want to support the information that the teachers in our area are giving to their classes. We want to bring a little bit of the ocean to our local children because some of them have not been to the ocean or touched salt water or seen a sea cucumber. We stress the importance of enjoying the ocean and th e animals found there, but also taking care of it and taking care to leave it as they find it when they do visit our shoreline. Because of the lower amount of money and funding for field trips, we feel that our outreach program is effective in bringing this kind of information into the class. We will reach as many as 100 students and adults in a day. Aquarium Advisor, Dave Long, proposed the idea to Cindy Eisen and asked her to lead it.
In 1995 the program had its first engagem ent at Joe Nightingale School in Santa Maria, California during that school's "Eagle Extravaganza", which was like a trade show for kids. The aquarium brought a slide show and some touch animals and did five twenty-minute programs. This year the Outreach Program did not have staff to repeat last year's performance, but plan to do it this next year. The Outreach also had some kindergarten program engagements. This year we went a step further and delivered presentations a to tal of seven days and did twenty-two programs. These were done at local Lompoc schools and one school in Santa Maria. There was no charge for these programs, however next year there will be some fee assessment.
We pattern ourselves after the Monterey Bay Aquarium and have visited with that Aquarium's Education Department, joining their Outreach Program and videotaping some of their engagements. Cabrillo has patterned its progra m for shorelines after Monterey's. This year we are targeting kindergarten through six grade, and we are doing a shoreline program very similar to that of Monterey Bay's. We have some similar props, and we cover everything that they also cover. The program has a little bit of discussion, and the children are asked to participate and answer questions. Then we have hands-on touching with animals. We also have some stations of self-discovery. We want to expand our program to more of the surrounding communities to include St. Ynez and Solvang. We'd like to be able to travel an hour in each direction to take our program on the road. This will depend on further funding and vehicles. We do have a request into a local automobile dealer for a vehicle for our outreach.

THE SAND BEACH VERSUS ROCKY BEACH SHORELINE PROGRAM

We talk about and compare these two environments and we introduce the word habitat to the children. Even i n kindergarten and first-grade, many of their teachers have talked about this and have already introduced habitat so this is information that supports what the teachers have already told their children. We talk about habitats and introduce the animals that live there and the special adaptions that nature has given these creatures that allows them to cope and survive in these environments. We also talk about tidepooling tips and things that these children can do when they go to the beach. We encourage them to discover and explore, but we also want them to take care of the animals and teach their family members how to care for the beach and the animals.
The talking part of the program and the questioning with the kids lasts about twenty minutes, depending on the group. During the talk the moderator brings specimens of the animals that are being discussed; for instance, we have sea stars, a preserved sand crab, sea urchins, shells fro m olive snails, and pictures of rocky shores and sandy shores. We encourage the children to look for these animals while they're at the beach. The talk leads into the touching and self-discovery part of the program, which usually lasts fifteen to twenty minutes depending on the group and their concentration span.
The kindergarteners segment usually is no longer than forty minutes. The group is split into three sections: two areas have touch trays and on e area has self-discovery stations. The touch trays have tidepool animals that connect to the discussion part of the outreach program. The animals brought from the Cabrillo Aquarium usually include: several kinds of sea stars--bat stars and giant sea stars which are then compared by colors, number of arms, spiny skin differences between species; sea cucumbers; several kinds of snails (chestnut cavalry and wavy top); decorator crab; purple sea urchin; and abalone. Kids are encouraged to touch and often kids want to kiss the sea cucumber. The touch tray areas are manned by students or volunteers. In order to keep the animals in good health we have to be very careful of the water temperature. The animals are transported in insulated buckets with aerators, and ice is always brought along to cool the water. We do not want the animals to experience any extra stress due to water temperature fluctuations.
Self-discovery stations are place s where the teachers can help out, although it's self-guided with question cards. These cards may have a question or a direction; for example, one card talks about sea stars. The directions are "Count the sea stars rays". The person counts the number of arms on four different kinds of sea stars. One sea star has six arms, two sea stars have five arms, and one sea star with about twenty-three or twenty-four arms. The question asks, "Do all sea stars have the same number of arms?" When the person flips over the card they discover that the sea star here with the most number of arms is called a sunflower star. There are about eight different stations like this. One station deals with whale bones where we have a rib and a vertebrae. Students love to lay on the floor and measure themselves against the huge whale rib. There is also a pickle specimen shark. There is a station that talks about insulation in marine mammals, wherein the students are able to touch a lard- filled baggy and a water-filled baggy that are sitting on ice and decide which one is colder. There is also a means by which to view tidepools, which is made out of a coffee can and a plastic bag and a rubber band, and this is something the kids can make at home. There is also a sea star display, a corral display, and a krill display.
The program operates best with two volunteers and the director, Cindy Eisen, for setup and breakdown. Th is past year saw a breakthrough wherein the Cabrillo High School Principal, John Lemon, permitted Cabrillo students to accompany the outreach effort during school hours. These students were members of the Aquarium Club and were totally familiar with the marine program, especially since they give at least two tours a week at Cabrillo's Aquarium. Selected students are experienced and proven responsible and required to make up any missed classroom assignments. Students are essentially on a field trip and may m iss up to half a day. Also accompanying this group of volunteers is an adult from the Cabrillo Aquarium Docent Program, who is also a student studying education.

MARINE SCIENCE/OUTREACH COLLABORATION

Outreach Director, Cindy Eisen, works closely with the marine science class taught by her husband, Greg Eisen. Requirements of the Marine Science class, offered only to juniors and seniors, include fifteen project hours per semester that may involve giving daytime or evening tours of the aquarium, or creating usable projects for the Outreach that can be taken on the road and used in educational efforts in the classroom.
Projects:

• coloring book 1, 2, 3, 4
• hidden pictures 1, 2, 3, 4
• ocean alphabet cards
• tide pool search-a-word puzzles
• concentration ocean animal-card game
• student/staff tour guides 1, 2, 3