Cape Carousel Program takes students outside to learn about maritime life and history

Students enrolled in two Cape Carousel Program courses during the first session of the year have had the opportunity to take multiple field trips to expand their learning.

Those enrolled in Feathers, Fins and Scales have gotten up close and personal with some of the fascinating creatures that inhabit the Delaware coast. As part of the curriculum, the class traveled to Cape Henlopen State Park in October, where students perused the bay beach and surrounding wooded areas in search of critters and received instruction on the habitat there by Cape Carousel instructor Suzanne Thurman, executive director of the Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute.

In addition to learning ship speak, knot tying, navigation, survival, swordsmanship and other essential pirate skills, students enrolled in the Pirates of the Delaware Bay class went on two field trips accompanied by their instructor Shawn Heacock, a historian and naturalist for Delaware State Parks. The Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes stayed open late and put together  a presentation on the wide array of artifacts and interactive displays it houses, as well as how its collection relates to the pirate population of old.

For their second trip, students visited the Indian River Life-Saving Station Museum at Delaware Seashore State Park. There they learned about the heroic surfmen who lived and worked at the station in the late 1800s through the dark and cold of winter to be on hand for saving lives when ships wrecked off the Delaware coast.

An after-school enrichment program sponsored by the Cape Henlopen School District, the Cape Carousel Program continues to thrive in its 15th year with more than 160 fourth- through eighth-grade students enrolled in 14 Session One courses. Registration for Session Two is currently in progress and will feature 13 classes including cake decorating, ball sports, improv and musical theater, scrapbooking and crafts, comfort food prep, mixed media art, cartooning, voice and piano workshop, tennis, Chinese cooking and Science Olympiad.

A Community Night celebration for Session One, where student work will be showcased, is scheduled for 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 19, in the Lewes School auditorium. For more information on the Cape Carousel Program call 302-644-7917 or go to http://www.teachers.cape.k12.de.us/~ccphome.