Mote SEA Shark Pups & Grown Ups
For Sarasota’s youngest ocean explorers, a shark can be more than a creature glimpsed through aquarium glass.
By Edit Sarasota Staff
For Sarasota’s youngest ocean explorers, a shark can be more than a creature glimpsed through aquarium glass. It can become a prompt to move, investigate, imagine—and ask the kind of wonderfully direct questions that send grown-ups back to the books. Mote SEA Shark Pups & Grown Ups turns that curiosity into a lively early-childhood STEM experience designed for children ages 2 through 5 and the favorite adults who accompany them.
The program recognizes something important about learning at this age: discovery works best when it is active, social, and a little playful. Rather than asking preschoolers to sit still for a conventional lesson, each class combines movement, sign language, science-tool exploration, role play, and games. The result is an introduction to scientific thinking that feels less like instruction than an invitation—one that gives children room to observe, imitate, experiment, and make meaning alongside someone they trust.
That approach feels particularly at home in Sarasota, where marine science is part of the region’s identity and where conversations about the Gulf often begin with a child’s fascination. Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium has long connected research, conservation, and public education, helping local families see the waters beyond the shoreline not as an abstract resource but as a living neighborhood. At Mote SEA, those connections begin early, with programs that make science approachable before children ever encounter it in a classroom.
Each month brings a new theme, and every class is distinct, giving families a reason to return while keeping the experience fresh for their Shark Pup. For adults, the session offers more than a morning activity: it is a chance to notice how a child learns, to join in without taking over, and to share the pleasure of discovering something together. For the children, it is a welcoming first step into the habits of inquiry that shape every good scientist—looking closely, trying things out, and staying curious.
Mote SEA Shark Pups & Grown Ups takes place Saturday, September 26, 2026, at Mote Science Education Aquarium, 225 University Town Center Drive in Sarasota. Families can find the program at the aquarium’s PostalAddress listing, with the session tailored for children ages 2 through 5 and their accompanying adults.