Ocean creatures wow young students

FARMINGTON – Ocean critters stopped by to visit students attending the summer learning program at W.G. Mallett School on Monday.

The full day summer program, which runs Monday through Thursdays, currently has 47 kindergarten through second-grade students from across the Mt. Blue Regional School District attending class.

The morning session is the established extended school program which reinforces core academic studies and the new afternoon program provides enrichment activities such as arts and crafts, outdoor programs and field trips, said Principal Tracy Williams.

The afternoon session is thanks to the Century 21 grant, administered by the Maine Department of Education. The collaborative is a unique partnership between the Franklin County Children’s Task Force and the school district’s administrators that provided for the creation of all-inclusive after school programs year round.

All of the young students in the summer learning program know for sure is that the ocean holds an incredible variety of creatures, thanks to a touch tank brought to the school by Clinton Goodenow of Freeport.

Mallett School second grade teacher, Hannah Goodenow, invited her father to bring the touch tank of clams, lobsters, starfish, and more, so students could get an up close look and feel of them. Clinton Goodenow, treasurer of the Maine Clammers Association, regularly travels to classrooms as part of an education program that brings awareness of what lies or swims under the sea.

Hannah Goodenow said it was decided to use Maine as the summer class theme. Integrating math skills, for instance, may involve adding or subtracting shells,  reading is centered on books about the ocean and the students are writing about Maine’s plants and animals in their nature journals.

A student holding up a razor clam and having it squirt brought giggles. Questions like “does it bite” were popular before small hands dared to pick up a starfish or horseshoe crab. There were precise descriptions while holding each. “It’s sloppy” one student opined while another through a piece of kelp was slippery.

Goodenow hummed with her students to coax a hermit crab from its formidable shell, but to no avail.  As Kaelyn Parlin was leaving for other class activities, she asked Clinton Goodenow, “Can you come back?”