When school’s out, we often think of taking the kids to a waterpark, the beach, the zoo, or an amusement park, but have you ever thought about taking your kids to a tide pool? These rocky pools by the ocean are filled with sealife that kids and adults find fascinating. You’ll often find tide pools recreated in aquariums or science centers, but there’s nothing better than exploring one first hand and here’s why.

Exploring Tide pools. Photo by LiLing Pang

1. Free Fun – Admission ticket prices can put a pretty big dent in any summer vacation budget. Tide pools are great fun because you get maximum fun for the minimum price. Instead of forking over $20-30 per person to get into an aquarium, take them to a nearby tide pool for free and see if you can find some of Nemo’s friends, sea anemones, starfish, crabs, needlefish and more. Depending on where you are, you may even find some harbor seals or octopuses.

Check-out this starfish. Photo by LiLing Pang

2. Best teacher in the world – School’s out, but your kids’ curious minds are still busy at work. Regardless of the age of your kids, you can make any tide pool trip educational. From discovering and identifying marine life, to learning about marine ecology or the ocean’s tidal rhythms, there’s no shortage of questions to be answered for inquiring minds.  Here are some great books on tide pools to help beef up your own knowledge base.

Look, Mom! A hermit crab! Photo by Richard Masoner/Flickr

3. Fostering Fancy Footwork – Tide pools are natural obstacle courses for your kids to master. With smaller kids, tide pools are the perfect training ground for teaching little feet greater coordination and balance.  Who needs little gym classes?  Whether it’s wading through the rocky pools or stepping from rock to rock, you’ll be building the future generation of Jacque Cousteaus. For the older set, there are often more challenging rocks to scale or even chances to go snorkeling..

Exploring Tide pools. Photo by Nick Van Laar/Flickr

To keep those fancy feet safe, remember to equip them with shoes with a solid grip. Never been to a tide pool before? Here are 10 Safety Tips when Tidepooling with Kids.

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