MATTAPOISETT — Pairs of small shoes piled up in the Center School gym as second graders slid into a life-sized, inflatable humpback whale.

Sitting inside the whale’s belly, students learned about its internal organs, how they were similar to the organs they have in their own bodies and how whales filter their food out of the water.

“We learned all about what’s in the body,” said eight-year-old Lucy Eilertsen.

The inflatable whale was brought to the school by the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance on Wednesday, June 4 and is modeled based off of a whale named Salt that the organization has been tracking since 1976.

“The more kids learn about these creatures, the better they’re going to protect them,” said Jody Allen, who has been with the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance for the past four years.

Ben Squire, a science teacher at Center School, said the Association brings the whale to the school every couple of years. This program was funded in part through a grant from the Mattapoisett Cultural Council.

“I just hope that the kids take a little bit away and sort of understand the world around them a little bit better,” Squire said.

Allen said that she thinks teaching the kids at Center School about marine life is especially important since the community is “so close to the water.”

“I think the biggest thing now is just connecting the kids to nature and helping them realize where they live and that the ecosystems are so close and so vulnerable at the same time,” Squire said.

Besides going into the inflatable whale, the students also went into a tent to listen to whale sounds, studied blubber and learned facts about whales.

“We identified what their tail looked like and how to tell what kind of whale they are based on their tail,” Gordon Sherburne, 7, said.

Eilertsen said she had the most fun when she went into the “giant whale” and learned about what was in its body, but she also had fun listening to the whale sounds.

“It was really cool hearing it because it felt like I was actually underwater,” she said.

 Allen, who said the inflatable whale is the “perfect education tool,” noted that the entire event is “a wonderful learning experience that sticks with [the students].”

“These are all hands-on activities that they can get involved in,” she said. “Even when they’re listening to the whale sounds, they’re doing an activity.”

Squire said that while the experience is great for teaching kids about marine life, it’s also a way to get the kids more hands-on, noting he thinks it’s “the most important thing for kids in today’s world.”

“Letting them feel nature and understand nature is important,” he said.