Aquarium Field Trip

 

We used some of our school funds to get a membership to the Aquarium this year, and I'm sorry to say, we don't really love it. I mean—we do like the Aquarium. It's fun to go to…occasionally. But it's just always full of SUCH loud and rowdy schoolkids. And there are exhibits closed all the time. And it just doesn't feel like even close to such a good value as our Thanksgiving Point Membership, which we love. (There are just so many more things to do at Thanksgiving Point! More variety! And it only costs half the amount! Also, it annoys me that the Aquarium "family" membership only includes four kids. The Thanksgiving Point membership includes any number of children living at home!)

However, with all those complaints, we have made good use of our membership nonetheless! It was good timing because we were studying Oceans all through the Fall. And there is a Caw for Gus! (There are supposed to be two Caws…but there is only ever one. Did one die and they just aren't telling people?!?😱) And, of course, there are penguins, which we love.

The kids also like the gift shop! Not for buying things, of course. Just for hugging them and taking pictures.

Ziggy did use birthday money from Grandma to actually buy something. This weird shark blaster. The batteries lasted all of two days. But he sure enjoyed it!

Aquarium penguins

To go with our Penguin Unit, we went to the aquarium because they have penguins there! This normally would have been too expensive of a field trip, but since we usually do a family activity for birthdays anyway, we counted this as Daisy's birthday present. (Warning: all these pictures are terrible, but they remind me of a nice day, so I look at them fondly anyway.)

I went to the aquarium with Abe's school class last year and he's been wanting to go back with the family ever since. The aquarium has grown a lot since we first went there seven years ago (the day I was in labor with Sebby---at that time it was just a big empty room with some stingrays in a tank and, like, an octopus. Super disappointing.) and it's quite fun. I think they are dreaming of/ fundraising for a bigger space (of course they are; when is a place like this not fundraising?!) and I can see that several of the exhibits are not . . . ideally situated (e.g. none of the kids could really see the penguins on land, since the waterline was above their eye level, and of course there are big "NO CLIMBING" signs on any surface that might be remotely helpful in boosting them up). Still, we really liked the penguins (they are Gentoo Penguins, which look like they have little white headbands on. So cute!) best, but we really enjoyed everything. There's a display where you can get an electric shock like you'd get from an electric eel, which of course all the children had to try 500 times. We liked the otters a lot, too.

Cute baby sharks

Little Blue Penguin and little pink baby

Daisy was riveted to this exhibit