We pride ourselves in the Two Oceans Aquarium Environmental Education Centre on what we offer to the children and schools of the Western Cape and beyond. Our programmes reach up to 67 000 children a year; and those are just the ones that visit us at the Aquarium. We also have two outreach vans which reach an additional 25 000 children who cannot afford to visit us. On top of that, we also have a Mobile Puppet Stories team that visits various pre-schools and primary schools all around Cape Town, and takes our in-house puppet shows to up to 200 children a day.
This past Tuesday 27 September 2016, we hosted an evening for almost 160 teachers and principals, showcasing our educational programmes.
The staff were all ready to go, with many of the guests already queuing at the door. Woolworths was the kind sponsor of the beautiful reusable shopping bags, which we handed out, packed with all kinds of goodies inside.
Part of the evening was to get our guests to visit our various educational stations, while having fun and seeing the Aquarium exhibits. This entailed a ‘treasure hunt’ of sorts. Armed with a map of the Aquarium and various questions that needed to be answered, our guests set out to explore.
One of the stops included our AfriSam Children’s Play Centre, where everyone was entertained by our puppets Beauty and Geo, who feature in the ‘I Live Smart’ puppet show.
Some of our Young Biologist volunteers passionately shared their knowledge with the crowd by showing them the fascinating creatures that live in our touch pool and microscope exhibits.
Always ready for photo opportunities, our three mascots Silver the Shark, Samantha the Penguin and Balo the Clownfish kept everyone entertained.
Apart from visiting our Discovery Centres upstairs, we also gave everyone a chance to chat to our two outreach teachers; Thabo Sabeko, who runs our Oceans in Motion programme and Anzio Abels who is our Smart Living teacher.
Towards the end of the evening, guest speaker Lauren de Vos, spoke about her interesting research in False Bay. Her current research focuses on using remote imagery techniques to survey benthic macroinvertebrates and demersal ichthyofauna. Russell Stevens, our Head of Education, also introduced the Environmental Education Centre and what we are all about.
The highlight of the evening was definitely the prize draw. Some amazing prizes were up for grabs, such as spa vouchers, penguin encounters and a goody hamper from Faithful to Nature. The Grow Learning Company also donated a special goody pack for an Early Childhood Development teacher.
We really enjoyed the evening and hope the teachers and principals did too. Here is to a growing relationship between the Two Oceans Aquarium and the teaching community of Cape Town!
A thank you to our sponsors:
