You spent all summer cultivating your child’s love for the ocean.

Now you can celebrate that nautical love @ Gray’s Reef 2008 Ocean Film Festival. The festival has a special program for kids – Seaside Saturday. It will be 9-10 am Sat. Sept. 20 @ SCAD’s Trustees Theatre – Broughton Street. All children are invited to attend this FREE! event with their parents.

The event includes these kid-friendly films:

• Sanctuary Sam – (1 min) – The National Marine Sanctuary System’s “flippered” ambassador delivers a message.
• Water Detectives – (11 min) – Children of one Mexican town teach the adults how to conserve water.
• Ride of the Mergansers – (11 min) – Baby mergansers get their first look at the world.
• Always Ready – (4 min) – A kid-sized view of the U.S. Coast Guard produced by 8-year-old Herbert Gilman.

For more info, click here.

Add this to this week’s kids events we highlighted in your weekly SouthernMamas newsletter (If you didn’t receive yours, email anne@southernmamas.com): crafts and coastal reptiles @ Skidaway Island State Park on Fri. Sept. 5.
2 pm: crafts and critters bags @ the park’s interpretive center.
4 pm: coastal reptiles. Learn all about them. See live ones. Bring your camera for pictures.
8:30 pm: sensory awareness night hike. Learn about different creatures that come out at night and awaken your senses with experiments on this hike.
For more info, call 912.598.2300. For driving directions, click here.

Coming Sat. Aug 23: the opening of Oatland Island Wildlife Center’s new Wolf Wilderness exhibit.

No more looking down on the six wolves from a viewing platform, behind a chain-link fence and several feet away.

The Wolf Wilderness observation cabin, pictured under construction here, will allow you to stand at four 6-foot-tall windows and watch the creatures at ground level, according to this article in the Savannah Morning News. The article points out the special safety glass in the windows is the same tough stuff used in zoos for gorillas.

Other creatures will also be displayed in the cabin – bats, snakes and a tarantula. Nearby will be enclosed displays featuring a peregine falcon and some armadillos.

You’re invited to the release of the loggerhead sea turtle, Squirty 1:30-3:00pm Thurs. Aug. 7 @ the Tybee Island Pier.

Burton 4-H Center on Tybee Island has raised Squirty since he was one week old and weighed only 20 grams. He arrived as a straggler hatchling so he could be an ambassador to children. Since then, 12,000 students have seen him and learned more about endangered sea turtles. Squirty is now almost two years old and weighs in at an impressive 19 lbs.

Squirty’s “bon voyage” party Thursday will include educational booths with info about sea turtles and other animals; food and T-shirts for sale to help raise money for 4-H’s next sea turtle; and a 2 pm demonstration nest and contest. Then, Squirty will make his way to the ocean.

Burton 4-H Center is accepting donations to help fund the release. Donations can be made by clicking here

A big thank you to SouthernMamas subscriber Deborah Evans for letting us know about this fun event.