Homeschool Days
For children who regard every tide pool as a puzzle and every shell as evidence, marine science begins with a question: What lives here, and how does it survive?
By Edit Sarasota Staff
For children who regard every tide pool as a puzzle and every shell as evidence, marine science begins with a question: What lives here, and how does it survive? At Mote SEA’s Homeschool Days, those questions become the starting point for an afternoon of discovery, with Sarasota’s waters—and the scientists who study them—providing the inspiration.
Designed for homeschool students ages 6 through 14, the monthly programs offer a more tactile approach to learning than a textbook can provide. Participants will explore aspects of Mote research and marine science through engaging, hands-on experiences, encountering the methods and ideas that shape our understanding of the Gulf, its wildlife, and the ecosystems that sustain coastal life. The format recognizes that a six-year-old and a fourteen-year-old may approach the same subject very differently, while still allowing families to learn together.
The programs are organized around classes for students ages 6–9, classes for those ages 10–14, and an option designed to accommodate families with children across the full 6–14 range. All fall-semester Homeschool Day programs will be offered in the afternoons, a schedule that leaves room for a morning at school—or, in the case of homeschool families, the flexibility to build a full day around curiosity, conversation, and exploration.
Mote SEA, the Mote Science Education Aquarium, extends the educational work of Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium into a setting where science is meant to be experienced up close. Mote’s presence has long connected Sarasota to marine research and conservation, from local habitats to the larger challenges facing oceans worldwide. For families, that connection offers something particularly valuable: a chance to see science not as an abstract subject, but as a living practice rooted in the place they call home.
The September session takes place Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at Mote SEA, 225 University Town Center Drive in Sarasota. With age-specific and family-friendly options available, Homeschool Days offer a thoughtful way to turn an afternoon into an inquiry—one that may begin with a lesson and continue long after, whenever a child spots a fish, shell, or stretch of shoreline and starts asking better questions.