Hands-on Ocean Experience For Nursery School Children

By Tanjua Damon

Since Chris Lener could not bring the entire ocean to Newtown Congregational Cooperative Nursery School on Tuesday, she brought some sea squirts for the three-year-old children to experience.

The group has been learning about what can be found in the ocean, learning about what can be found there and how they survive. Chris Lener, a marine biologist, organized Sea Squirts, an educational outreach program that allows school children to see tide pool animals – where they live, how they eat, and about the animals’ bodies.

“We’re going to talk more about the ocean today,” Ms Lener said. “We’re going to do something really different.”

Ms Lener asked the children what was special about the ocean in the way it tastes.

“It tastes like salt,” Nicholas Gosselin said.

The children looked at starfish, hermit crabs, snails, and horseshoe crabs. They were able to look at them up close and touch them.

Ms Lener told the children that starfish or sea stars do not have any fins. They have five arms and at the end of each arm is an eye. This sea squirt can only see light and dark.

“It doesn’t need to see predators either,” Ms Lener said. “Sea stars don’t have to worry about big animals or little animals because of their skin. It’s bumpy.”

A star fish’s mouth is located on its belly and it drinks from a point on top of the animal.

Ms Lener reminded the youngsters that the animals in the ocean do not really belong to us, but are visitors and should be taken extra special care of.

“They don’t belong to me. They belong to the ocean,” she said. “We have to take very good care of them because they are visiting.”

The rings of a clamshell tell how old it is, Ms Lener told the group. A hermit crab lives in a snail shell and moves into a bigger shell when it grows.

“Snail shells can be used to hear the ocean,” Ms Lener said. “With their antennas they can hear, smell, see, and touch.

Spider crabs are actually white, but since they bury themselves in the mud to hide from predators, they are discolored and look brown.

The horseshoe crab has four eyes, Ms Lener said. Their mouths are on their knees.

“You can’t catch food if you sit around if you are a horseshoe crab,” she said. “They have to move around to get food.”

Their mouths feel like toothbrushes, she said. Male horseshoe crabs have boxing gloves and the females do not.