FOCIP Education Days - May 8-9, 2008

Thanks to 24 Camano Island Beach Watchers, we once again supported the Friends of Camano Island Parks (FOCIP) with their annual 2nd Grade Education Days project. Each day, May 8 and 9, there were 120 students, 30 or so parents along with about 25 FOCIP guides. We explored the forest, interacted in a program about estuaries; learned tips about safe camping and then after lunch took part in the activities of our six stations at the beach. The students come from local elementary schools on Camano Island and Stanwood.

Listen up

What's under that rock

Thursday, May 8, was a very cold day at Camano Island State Park when we began setting up at 9:30 am and it stayed chilly throughout the entire day. The four divers we had were able to retrieve wonderful critters from depths of 25 - 30 feet to have in the touch tanks. They picked up a few bottles as litter and it was discovered that there was an octopus in one of the bottles; an added treat that was added to the aquarium display. A number of Beach Watchers explored the Rocky Shore area and also discovered lots of specimens to add to the aquariums.
Friday was warmer. However the tide wasn't low until later in the day which meant we weren't able to thoroughly explore the Rocky Shore and retrieve as many interesting critters to have in the aquarium as we as we had on Thursday.

Sea stars in touch pools

As in the past years, we had six stations set up and the groups of students rotate through each area learning about the critters. We have touch pools so students can see and gently touch the marine specimens not usually visible; the natural beach of the rocky shore where discoveries are made looking under rocks and seaweed-all the time being instructed to carefully replace the rocks; barnacle feeding where students hear about the life cycle of barnacles and try to catch bubbles as "food", black hole is an activity where the students reach into a fabric covered bucket and without looking pull out an item that the leader has shown them; aquariums is always an exciting area which gives a close up view of the smaller sea critters--we had nudibranchs, an octopus, jelly fish, shrimp, clams, fish, sea stars on display; a new game of critter concentration was added this year-students matched pictures on cards with pictures on wooden discs that had been placed face down on a table.

Setting up aquarium

Kids inspecting aquarium

We held a recap of the activities on Friday at 2:30 pm. A number of suggestions/comments were gathered that can be used next year as we help a new bunch of "little bodies" explore the beach at Camano Island State Park.

Alice Blandin '02