Tide pool talk hooks kids on sea life
Apr 20, 2019
Reidar Bendicksen, 4, holds a spider crab at the library. Photo by: Kate Robinson
Amber Jiang, 8, holds a clam while Lily Shi, 7, looks on. Photo by: Kate Robinson
Erika Fernandes from the Lloyd Center for the Environment teaches the kids about clams. Photo by: Kate Robinson
Abigail Welch, 7, pokes at a whelk. Photo by: Kate Robinson
Louis Kwiecien, 5, touches the whelk while his little brother Bentley, 4, watches him. Photo by: Kate Robinson
Christian Botelho, 7, and Reidar and Ellery Bendicksen, 4 and 5, listen to Fernandes talk about spider crabs. Photo by: Kate Robinson
More than 30 children came out to the Southworth Library on Friday morning for a special storytime talk featuring sea animals from the Lloyd Center for the Environment.
Parents and guardians lined the walls as the children listened to the Lloyd Center’s Erika Fernandes read “In One Tidepool: Crabs, Snails and Salty Tails,” a book by Anthony D. Fredericks about the many creatures you can find on the border between land and sea.
After the story, the excitement in the air was palpable as Fernandes broke out the goods: a series of shells and sea creatures for the kids to touch as they learned.
Children tried to open a quahog clam, hummed to periwinkles, poked a whelk, and giggled as they felt the tickling legs of hermit crabs and one small spider crab.
Louis Kwiecien, 5, loves sea creatures. “He loves everything to do with the ocean,” said his mother Melissa. “I think he’s going to be a marine biologist some day.”
She had never heard of the midnight zone — a level of the ocean so dark it resembles midnight at all hours of the day — until he told her about it, and the vampire squids that live there.
But Louis wasn’t the only one fascinated by the ocean animals.
Abigail Welch, 7, touched the whelk’s ‘tongue’ and watched it react before declaring “I love snails!”
All around the room hands were going up as Fernandes asked questions, and kids pressed as close to her and the animals as they could possibly get.
Fernandes has worked as an outreach coordinator for the Lloyd Center for around eight years, and travels all around New Bedford, Fall River, and Dartmouth doing events like this.
It’s clear she enjoys the work. “They’re so cute,” she said of the kids.
Lisabeth Botelho, whose seven-year-old son Christian was at the front of the room trying to get even closer to the spider crab, commented: “I think it’s awesome. It’s great. Good learning experience, and the young lady that’s putting it on, I’m so impressed. She’s getting them all together, keeping [their] attention.”
“I think it’s fun for them,” agreed mother Xiaoli Dai. “They enjoy it.”
