Austin Aquarium Field Trip

A few months ago (yes my posts are that far behind what we’re actually doing) we went to the Austin Aquarium with my sister-in-law and my nephew.  It was a really fun field trip, and a great experience for the kids.

For my kids the biggest bonus of the Austin Aquarium is the touch tank tanks.  Almost every tank is open for kids to touch the animals inside.  We all loved that, and were touching as many as we could.

Austin Aquarium has a fun pirate/sunken treasure ambience, and we slowly wandered through it, okay my kids were in a bit of a hurry sometimes to see their favorite animals, but we did wander back through other areas they’d hurried past.

Batman’s favorite part of all was the manta ray tank.  For $3 you can feed 10 or so very small shrimp, or was it krill (?) to the manta rays.  They swarm to you when they realize you’ve got food and I’ve got a couple of fun videos of my kids trying to feed the manta rays and such.

Princess loved the lorikeet exhibit at the Austin Aquarium.  You can walk inside and see the lorikeets and they climb all over you.  Poor Batman was pooped on by one, and he spent the rest of the day talking about “the lorikeet that marked me,” so he bore it with good grace.  When you’re in there, you really have to watch where you’re walking because they climb and fly all over that room, and they like bright colors, so they kept trying to bite at the kids’ shoes.

Unfortunately for Superman the shark exhibit was closed when we visited the Austin Aquarium and you couldn’t pet them, but we watched them for a bit before heading over to the other animals in the exhibit.  Yes, this aquarium has a small reptile and amphibian exhibit in there as well.

 

Things to be aware of for your Austin Aquarium Field Trip

1. Check ahead of time if you want to pet certain animals.  Superman was very disappointed he couldn’t pet the sharks, I’d built that up as a big selling point.
2. There is a playscape there, but it’s for little guys.  My boys were too big, and Princess is almost too big.  If you’ve got a mixed age group the older ones will feel left out on that part.
3. It’s kinda pricey for what is there, I’m really hoping they get a few more animals, or maybe rearrange it somewhat, because there’s a lot for ambience, and big empty spaces allowing for large crowds.
4. I’d say it’s about 1-2 hour field trip.  We ended up rushing the end because I remembered a lunch appointment I’d totally forgotten about originally, which was kind of disappointing.
5. There’s a gift shop your kids will want to spend money at.  Batman bought his 10th, yes you read that right, 10th manta ray doll there.

Extending the learning from the Austin Aquarium Field Trip

For us this was a great review from our study of swimming creatures two years ago, and flying creatures from 3 years ago.  But, for particular animals we saw there, here’s what I’d do:

• Oceans craft
• Starfish activity
• Dissect a shrimp
• watch Finding Nemo {affiliate link}

What else would do to follow up on the Austin Aquarium?

  

<div align="center"><a href="https://ticiamessing.com/category/science-sunday/" title="Science Sunday"><img src="https://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g344/Ticia1/AiMScienceSundaycopy.jpg" alt="Science Sunday" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Now link up your SCIENCE posts, new and old, and then visit some of the other posts linked up and say hi. I’m going to be pinning, commenting, FBing or tweeting all of the posts linked up as the week goes by. At the end of the month I’m going to feature the best posts linked up.

Make sure to include a link back to my blog so people can come back from your post to see what others have done.  By linking you are agreeing I can feature your posts in a round up post later (I may use a picture to feature, but will link back).