Seashells

I'd say we had another fun and successful weekend in our science class!  One of my favorite parts of the weekend was going through the different table activities and stations based around shells.  

I absolutely love the beach.  Any beach!  I lived in Miami, Florida for a year and a half.  My family vacations to Fort Walton, Destin, and Gulf Shores often.  We also go with Ben's family to Murrell's Inlet, South Carolina every July, which is very different from Florida's beaches, but still a beach! :)

My favorite part of our activity was the shell mold.

I did a similar activity when I was teaching school-aged kids in the summer program.  We went on Ben's family's beach trip for a week.  All of my kiddos asked for a souvenir, so I collected shells all week for them.  

Here's the activity that we did when I came back:

1.  I passed around pictures of my trip and we shared vacation stories.

2.  I made a sensory bottle with sand, salt water, and shells from my trip.  They LOVED this.  We kept it in our science center of the classroom, and it was one of the sensory bottles that they would always take turns playing with.

3. We looked at a map of my trip and talked about how long it took to drive and how long it might take to fly or even walk.

4.  We had writing prompts and wrote about shells.

5.  They shared their writing and then picked out their favorite shell to take home.

 

Even throughout a summer program, it is easy to incorporate science (and language arts) activities.  This proves how much fun hands-on group work can be!  Plus, my shells were even cheaper than the Dollar Store :)