Manatee

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I packed up a majority of my students, and headed for Florida. The annual Manatee fieldtrip is one of my favorites - this year was great too. We didn't see as many manatee because it was a lot warmer, but my students are amazing, and showed such absolute trust in me that was very heartwarming. I did get an underwater digital camera for Christmas (thanks Brian) and was CHARGED UP to use it, but only saw a few. Most of my pics are of my students which I can't share, but I managed a few natural wildlife all the same.

The kids became very adept at identifying a few fish - mullet (above) the loved because we read the book Hoot before we went and they tried to catch a few like Mullet Fingers does in the story.

This is a sheepshead - once I gave them the name they quit saying zebrafish.

Then of course, the amazing manatee. Not too many because of warmer temperatures and scuba divers (they don't like a sound that scuba gear makes, and we watched them leave an area VERY quickly when the divers showed up).

This one below, wanted us to rub his belly. This onewas wonderful because it hung around for a LONG time and allowed a bunch of the kids to experience it.

We also snorkeled Rainbow River- no manatee, but tremendously gorgeous scenery. We saw turtles, birds, fish of all sizes, and of course the bubbling sand.

I will try to post some video I (or my colleague) took, but I can't have any with students in it, and quite honestly, mine are very jerky because I was swimming students on both arms, whenever they got scared their little hands would start to shake (my arm) and it was hard to take a lot of decent anything.