Down By The Bay

On Tuesday, we went on our field trip to the Great Bay Discovery Center with all of Second Grade! 

Great Bay is an estuary, which means it is a combination of salt water from the ocean and fresh water from the rivers. Lots of different animals live in and around Great Bay, including horseshoe crabs, flounder, oysters, mussels, soft shell clams, green crabs, mud snails, great blue herons, osprey, turkeys, porcupines, river otters, muskrats, rabbits, and white tailed deer. We traveled all around the boardwalks, shoreline, and discovery center to learn about this amazing habitat and the animals who live here. We split our classes into two groups and we headed off to different centers throughout the morning. 

We made a stop at the Great Bay Cafe, where we learned how to make estuary soup! 

Estuary Soup is essential for the Great Bay food chain. Animals like oysters, mud worms, mussels, and clams rely on the estuary soup for their food, who are then eaten by crabs, and lobsters, who then get eaten by bass and flounder, who finally get eaten by birds like the osprey

We also walked down by the shore, where we searched for all sorts of plants and animals!

Because it was closer to high tide, we weren't able to find any horseshoe crabs, but we were able to find some mussels, oysters, periwinkles, mud snails, and rockweed

Afterwards, we learned about some of the different trees growing around Great Bay and we also learned how to count the rings on a tree to see how old it is!

We then headed to the boardwalk where we worked together to identify lots of different animal footprints while learning about the different mammals and birds living around Great Bay

We learned that carnivores, omnivores, AND herbivores live in this habitat!

We learned lots about the Osprey living around the bay and got to see one of their nests through the special binoculars on the boardwalk

We also got to see Great Bay's Live Osprey Cam, which gave us an even closer look at their nest and their new chicks! You can check out their live web cam here!

While inside the Discovery Center, we also got to see and hold more of the creatures living in Great Bay. We got to hold a horseshoe crab, a clam, and a mussel, and we got to see several flounder, an eel, and a rock crab! 

We had an amazing time on our trip, and we learned so many awesome new facts down by the bay! Thank you very much to our amazing docents who led us on our exploration and to our many chaperones who joined us for the trip. 

Great Bay Discovery Center is a wonderful place to visit with your family, you can check out their calendar of events here!