Education Program | Fort Myers, FL | Banana Bay Boat Tours

engaging field trips

Take your students on an engaging and educational field trip with Banana Bay Tour Company! With activities that cater to any grade level, teachers can choose from any of our offered programs to build their own custom experience. We also have an experienced educational coordinator on staff to oversee all Florida State Curriculum programs, and would be happy to help you plan the perfect trip.

Grades K-1

Hands on activities
- What better way to learn than to have students actively engaged in the process! We encourage students’ natural love of learning by providing hands on activities such as Dolphin spotting, Impression Drawling, and Water Labs.
Observation and Inference
- Students will utilize all five senses to gather information on a variety of subject matters and make educated guesses and explanations about what they see and witness. Activities include monitoring animal behavior, water movement, and tree growth.
Eco Friendly Lessons (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink)
- You’re never too young to learn how to be a good steward of the Earth. Even young children can be taught valuable lessons on ways to be less harmful to the environment. We teach our students environmentally sound habits as well as show them how they can implement these habits in their own homes and back yards, so that they are more conscious of how they personally can make a positive contribution to the world.
Living vs Non-Living
- Students will explore the characteristics that distinguish living from non-living things using real world examples and hands on discoveries. They will develop criteria for differentiating the two groups and classify things as living and non-living based on those criteria. The goal is for young children to understand the difference between living and non-living things and why.
Biodiversity
- There is a special link between animals, plants, and people. We teach our students what unites all living form on Earth. Children will experience the Estuary, River and Gulf eco systems through the eyes of mother nature, seeing all the life throughout the Plant, and animal Kingdoms in a way they won’t soon forget!

Grades 2-3

Worksheets and Observational Data Collecting
- Learning the ways in which data is used to answer questions whose answers are not immediately obvious teaches students how to think more analytically about the things around them. We provide class specific worksheets pertaining to labs and observations that give students first hand experiences in gathering data.
Phases of Matter
- Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma we talk about all 4 phases of matter, how they change, and where you can find them.
Observation and Inference
- The foundation on which any experiment is built, the Scientific Method is an important tool that students must learn in order to explore observations and answer questions. Students will master and apply the Scientific Method to come to conclusions about what has been hypothesize and observed.
Florida Rock Cycles
- Everything in life goes in cycles, even rocks! We cover topics like erosion, heat, and pressure, how they all play a part in rock transformations, as well as the common types of beaches and rocks around Florida.
Plants
- How do plants grow? Reproduce? Help us breathe? We plant the seed of knowledge by teaching the entire plant cycle. Students will learn all about Florida native and non-native plants and their place in the ecosystem.
Eco-Friendly Life Style
- We teach age appropriate lessons to get children to think about how their actions affect the world around them. Respecting the outdoors, planting gardens in their own back yards, lending a hand in your own community by helping to clean up local parks or schools, these are all ways in which students not only help the environment but encourage an eco-friendly and communal lifestyle.

Grades 4-5

Water Cycle
- The single most important source for life as we know it, water is all around us in various forms. Students will learn about the importance of water to any ecosystem, but specifically they’ll learn about each phase of the Florida Water cycle and how it’s affected by this ecosystem.
Forms of Energy
- The world doesn’t function without energy and any citizen of this world should know of its importance. We will go over the different types of natural energy found in Florida’s ecosystems and how energy impacts our daily lives.
Erosion
- Florida is full of beautiful beaches and those awesome waves have an impact on the land. In this lesson, we cover Coastal Erosion, how wave and tidal currents, drainage, or high winds, remove beach and dune sediments and wear away the land. Students learn the temporary nature of beaches, and how they have changed over time.
Dichotomous Identification Key
- Dichotomous identification keys are a great tool for identifying different types of organisms or objects in the natural world. Students will learn to identify various characteristics of plants, animals, and rocks.
Eco-Friendly Life Style
- We teach age appropriate lessons to get children to think about how their actions affect the world around them. What does it mean to reduce your impact on the environment? Turning off lights you aren’t using, unplugging chargers after your phone has enough battery life, donating toys to thrift stores and charities, are all things to consider implementing into your daily routine.
Observation and Inference
- Using all five of their senses, studens will gather information on many different subjects, making educated guesses and explanations about what they see and witness. Activities include monitoring animal behavior, water movement, and tree growth.

Grades 6,7 and 8

Biomes
- We go over the different biomes around Florida and the world and how to identify them. We explain what types of plants and animals live in the various biomes and how biomes influence our climate.
Bilateral
- Teaching what bilateral is and how most animals have this trait and plants do not.
Genomes/Evolution
- Every living thing has a unique set of instructions for building its body. In this lesson, we explore Animal Relations and relatives and the history of certain species. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about your dog’s ancestors, this is the lesson for you!
Posterior and Anterior/Dorsal, Ventral
- Students learn parts of animals and how they use them in different environments, along with why they evolved differently for different environments and how some animals are similar without being directly related.
Body Systems
- It’s amazing how a group of organs can work together to provide organisms with an advantage for survival. We go over different body systems of animals and how they use them similarly and differently, as well as what they are used for.
Parts of a Cell
- You can’t see them, but they’re everywhere! The building blocks of all living things, we teach you about the differences between plant and animal cells and the parts in each.
Longitude and Latitude
- We demonstrate the concept of latitude and longitude by working with Maps and nautical charts to learn direction and placement. Find out where anything is, exactly where it is!
Observation and Inference
- Students will explore the ocean and its habitat with all five of their senses, gathering information on a variety of subjects and forming educated guesses and explanations. Activities include monitoring animal behavior, water movement, and tree growth.
Identify Land Forms
- Here’s another one for geography lovers. Using the geography and landmasses around the estuaries of southern Florida as well as maps, we teach students how identify land forms. Become a master of geography today!
Time Line
- What’s the point of growing up in a place you don’t know anything about? We create timelines of the history of southern Florida so that our students can learn about the incredibly interesting path and development of the Sunshine State.
Phases of the Moon / Tides
- Using hands on experiments and demonstrations, we will learn about the moon and how it affects our planet with gravitational pull. Find out the moon’s important impact on our waters and the relationship between the moon, the tides, and the weather.
Dichotomous Identification Key
- Using the key, we can identify and class different types of animals and how they relate. From there we can go off into nature and classify the various organisms and objects in real time.
Biodegradable vs Non-Biodegradable
- Not everything created on earth breaks down naturally and quickly. In fact, sometimes man-made substances can take hundreds of years to break down. Find out what happens when certain things break down, specifically trash and plastics, and how it affects the environment.
Biodiversity
- We discuss the different plant and animal life in an ecosystem and how it is all dependent on the other living organisms around them, how they are connected. This helps students to realize their place in the world and their choices and the choices around them can have greater effects on all.
Buoyancy
- Students learn about what floats and what doesn’t through the scientific method and experimentation. Find out why certain things float and how density and water molecules play a big part in the process.

Highschool

Body Systems
- Looking at the different body systems of animals, we discover how they use them similarly and differently, as well as what they are used for.
Observation and Inference
- By tuning into their senses, students will gather information on a variety of subject matters and make educated guesses and explanations about what they see and witness. Activities include monitoring animal behavior, water movement, and tree growth.
Plants
- Have you noticed how clean and pure the air feels when there’s a lot of plants around? We’ll take a look at various plants and how they get their energy through photosynthesis. We’ll also go over the consequences when there are no plants in sight!
Reproduction (Gestation)
- On this stop in the circle of life, we go over how different animals reproduce, how long development takes and what happens during different the various stages. Learn why some animals are more self-sufficient soon after birth while others, mainly us, are not so much.
Animal and Plant Adaptations
- Evolution is about survival. Here, students learn what adaptations organisms use to survive and how they evolved to be like they are today. Students will use prior knowledge in addition to teachings to develop their own theories as to why.
Taxonomy
- An incredibly complex, fluid science, taxonomy refers to the sorting and classifying of living organisms. Students are taught how biologists classify different animals and where the animals are placed on the evolutionary tree of life. Learn the wide variety of life in your own back yard alone!
Living vs Non-Living
- What is and was living and was never alive, students learn the difference between living and non-living things. We go over why living things need to survive and what does it mean to have never been alive.
Eco-Friendly Lifestyle
- We teach age appropriate lessons to get children to think about how their actions affect the world around them. Learn ways to tailor your lifestyle in a way that is kinder to the environment. Challenging students to question their own consumption and find ways to lessen their own environmental impact.
Biodiversity
- Experiencing the Estuary, River and Gulf eco systems through the eyes of mother nature. Seeing all the life throughout the Plant, and animal Kingdoms.

Education Programs

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