Skip to main content

Waikiki Aquarium

A few weeks ago, our homeschool co-op took a trip to the Waikiki Aquarium. The younger kids in our co-op are studying ocean animals this year, so most of our field trips have revolved around swimming creature. Hawaii is ideal for this sort of study.


The Waikiki Aquarium is small but has a lot to offer. We had docents give us a talk about marine animals, then they took the kids in groups of two and three all over the aquarium and showed us all the interesting species and answered questions. I've never had so many docents leading so many small groups. It was much better than being in a large crowd of people with everyone trying to hear the speaker.


When we arrived, the kids all immediately discovered a banyan tree outside and they swung monkeys from the rope-like growths.

We also discovered someone is using the banyan tree as a house. That is a sleeping bag, beach mats, and a bag of food tucked inside the tree. Well, if you're going to be homeless, be homeless in Hawaii. I never could understand why we had homeless people in Alaska. Why they didn't hop on the nearest boxcar and head for warmer weather, I will never know.



This is our own personal docent. He did a great job of talking to us about the sea critters we saw. There were only three girls and me in his group, which was excellent!


If you have an "Aquarium" setting on your camera, this is the place to use it. Usually when I try to take pictures in an aquarium, I get a picture of my flash reflecting back at me from the glass. If I don't use the flash, I get a blurry, gray photo of what might possibly be recognized as fish if you squint a little.


I thought these turned out pretty good though.

You can see a little flash in this one, but not enough to obscure the fish.

This is a dragon fish. He looks like seaweed. There's no telling how many of these you've swum by in the ocean, and never noticed it was a live creature.

This is just a basic reef with lots of fish in it. I just like the lighting and the colors.

And this picture is my favorite - a giant jellyfish. I'd hate to run into him out in the ocean, but boy was he cool behind glass!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Cookie Map of Egypt

Katie is studying ancient Egyptian history right now and in the interest of making it more "hands-on" for her, we've joined a co-op at our church. We've been part of the co-op for a long time, but we've not done history with them until now. I was in charge of this week's craft project so I had all the kids make maps of ancient Egypt out of cookie dough. Katie and I made one at home for practice, then we made one again at co-op so the pictures look different as I used some photographs from each session. Each child started out with one full tube of sugar cookie dough. They pressed each one out into a 10x6 inch rectangle as if it were clay or play dough. We used toothpicks to outline where we wanted land formations to be. Then we outlined the Mediterranean Sea with a blue gel. And filled it in with blue icing. We used Twizzlers to outline the Red Sea. Although the Red Sea isn't actually red, there is a seasonal algae there which is red in color. I thought the...

Queen Emma's Summer Palace

We recently visited Queen Emma's Summer Palace in Honolulu. If you are expecting a "palace", you will be disappointed. It's a nice house but not particularly palatial . If you think of it as Queen Emma's Summer Cottage, you'll enjoy it more because it will meet your expectations. Queen Emma was the wife of King Kamehameha IV. Their only child, Prince Albert, died at age four, and King Kamehameha IV died a year later. It's a sad story. The home was used by the royal family in the mid-1800's. Today it holds artifacts from that time period. Some of the furnishings and memorabilia actually belonged to Queen Emma. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside, so I didn't take any pictures. I did, however, find some images on the internet which I am copying here. Don't sue me, please. I did try to buy postcards in the gift shop, but they didn't have any. This photo is of the parlor. Queen Emma acquired this baby grand piano later ...