Koi Pond Trip

The girls recently went on a field trip to Splendor Koi Pond with Catherine's Girl Scout troop.  We are starting a "unit" on gardening and I thought a little lesson on water gardening would be fun.  Plus, this store was close to where we normally meet and the owner agreed to give us a free tour.  As it turned out, I am not sure if the girls learned anything about water gardening, but they seemed to have more fun at this field trip than I have ever seen them have.

The owner gave us all a bunch of food and told us to hold a tiny piece of it in the water (which was a very cold 60 degrees).  The fish opened their mouths very wide and took the food out of our fingers.  Apparently they do not have teeth until they are 5 years old, so there was no chance they could bite us (one of the girls asked the question).

 I love these next two pictures.  Catherine leaned over really far to feed the fish a small piece of food:

As soon as Catherine tried to feed the fish, tons of them immediately swam right up to her.  These fish were fairly big, so Catherine and the other girls reacted by jumping back.  However, during the hour that we were there all the girls got over their "fear" of the fish and could not be torn away from the ponds.

 I was also thrilled that none of the girls fell in (I was especially worried about my girls leaning in too far).

 A lot of the girls simply threw the food at the fish, rather than try to hand the fish one piece of food at a time.

Y trying to get her daughter M to hold the food for the fish to take it out of her hand, rather than just drop the food in the pond:

 We also saw a bunch of catfish in some of the interior tanks:

The tour was only an hour, but I think the girls could have stayed there all day!