Part 1 by Md Rafiqul Islam
SCOUT, Science Communication of the University of Tsukuba, organized its third Kagaku Asobi Lab event at Lala Garden shopping center on July 17, 2010. The theme was ‘Life in the Sea’ and coincided with Ocean Day (19th July). Around 40 children, aged between three and nine years old, and their parents came and enjoyed the event.
The activities began with a ‘true / false’ quiz aimed at focusing children’s attention on the ocean, sea animals and seaweed. Two workshop leaders conducted the quiz game assisted by two more staff. The leaders showed different posters of sea animals and seaweeds and told children about the content of the posters, followed by a true / false question. The children raised their hands and answered cheerfully.
For example ‘If there are no females in a group of clown fish, males will change sex to become female: is it true or false?’ (It’s true!) Some questions were a little difficult for the younger children, but they all enjoyed this session very much.
After the quiz, the children went to see three different booths. One of which included a game to help children understand how sea birds eat with sharp beaks or blunt beaks. The second booth was about the sea weed, their usefulness and varieties, and the third one was ‘touch pool’ allowing children to touch and experience a variety of small sea animals.
At the seabird booth, the booth leader described how sea birds catch their food and eat with their beak. Some birds, like ducks, have blunt, rounded beaks while others, like snipes, possess long, sharp ones. Birds with sharp beaks can easily catch food like worms but it is difficult for them to catch small, round-shaped food like tiny plants and animals living in the water. On the contrary, birds with blunt beaks can scoop up this small, round food more comfortably than worms.
The children could experience this difference in bird feeding techniques firsthand by ‘catching’ small plastic balls and plastic ‘worms’ with forceps or a spoon. Children were divided into two groups, one group were ‘ducks’ with spoons for blunt beaks, while the other group were snipes with forceps for sharp beaks. Each group tried to pick up as many balls and worms as possible within 30 seconds, then assistants compared the total worms and balls caught by each group.It was found that he snipe group collected more worms than balls, while the duck group collected more balls than worms.
The children enjoyed the game and realized how sea birds with different shaped beaks can catch different kinds of food.
Part 2 by Hitomi Morishima
At the touch pool booth, there were many living creatures such as sea slugs, crabs, sea urchins, sea hares, and shrimp which were collected from the sea by students of University of Tsukuba Marine Research Center in Shimoda. Many people gathered around as soon as the animals were put in the pools. At first, some children seemed scared to touch them, however once they were used to them, they seemed to become very interested and started asking questions about them.
At the seaweed booth, workshop leaders asked what kind of plants people knew. Explaining that trees are plants, they also explained that there are many kinds of marine plants. As examples of marine plants, the edible seaweeds ‘nori’, ‘hijiki’, and ‘wakame’, which had been bought from stores were shown to the children. They could not believe it at first, and remarked “What? These are plants, also?” After that, they tried to find live, unprocessed hijiki among many kinds of seaweed which had been collected from the ocean.
Even though it was a very hot day, people gathered around Kagaku Asobi Lab and seemed to enjoy learning. Through events like this, SCOUT hopes to share interesting information with both children and their parents. We encourage people to go to the sea this summer, and learn more about the life in the sea.
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