Kids Shell & Seashore Exploration

 This post is about some of the things we explored, and collected while visiting the East & West Coasts of Canada. I decided to let the photos do much of the talking here. 

The next few photos are from the West Coast, British Columbia.  These pictures were taken at Witty's Lagoon in Victoria BC. Below that are some pictures from our East Coast adventures, and lastly the shell and seashore study that evolved when we got home. I am making available a free copy of our various cards that we used in our studies 😃

A low tide we were able to walk far out to capture some images of the seals sun bathing on a small island.

This was an incredible learning experience for the children, and for us as well. The sand was so beautiful and filled with tiny creatures tracks and remnants of plant life.

The rocks at low tide were encrusted with barnacles and sea anemone. In posts to come I will share some of our exploration at the Vancouver Aquarium and The Shaw Ocean Discovery Center. Just amazing!!!

It was just incredible all of the treasures we were able to experience!!

Below are a few pictures from the East Coast Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. We did some major collecting here!!

Above Xander is checking out a few goodies while we were on a whale watching tour in St. Andrews New Brunswick. Below is an amazing trip to see the the Flower Pot Rocks at Hopewell Cape, NB. This is an incredible site to visit.  At low tide you can climb down a massive staircase to sea level and explore. It's amazing to see how the sea has shaped the rock overtime.

Below is the beach we spent time collecting on in Prince Edward Island.

We collected many great shells and treasures from the East & West Coasts of Canada. This is what we did with them.

We had a lot of shells that we wanted to keep and display!! The tall glass vase contains some East Coast shells and sand, and the large glass bowl are from the West.

So I put together a selection of shells in a tray, a few good books. I created a set of shell matching cards, and parts of a univalve and bivalve cards with definitions.

Xander loved the Junior Science Book of Shells (above).  It's an older book, but written so well and stocked with great information that Xander really enjoyed reading.

Junior Science Book of Seashells,

We were given an incredible set of books called The Illustrated Natural History of Canada. We included the books The Pacific Coast and The Atlantic Coast in our study. These books are so wonderful and filled with beautiful pictures!! I was able to locate only one in the series on amazon below.

The Pacific Coast (The Illustrated natural history of Canada)

This book looks amazing and one I would love to add to our collection.

I do have this book on order. I bought the Smithsonian Rocks and Minerals and was not disappointed this looks wonderful!!

Some of the contents are from our trips, and some were purchased or from my husbands vacations as a child.

Learning about nacre.

Getting in a little closer

Xander spent a great deal of time checking out and identifying the shells, and understanding various definitions as you can see below. This is a great link list of a huge selection of shell resources that I found helpful. 

Xander was weighing, measuring, comparing, drawing shells and making notes. He made a little shell science booklet to contain his notes.

This was a fantastic site that we loved!!

He was very interested in barnacles. We spent a lot of time studying their anatomy, life cycle, feeding and habitat.

We did a basic image search on the iPad and found all kinds of amazing information and images. The iPad has found it's way into the majority of our research and study.

We had a small cluster of barnacles from BC.

I created Univalve & Bivalve definition cards for sorting.

Ava did tons of exploration!! I photographed our shells and made a set of matching cards. These are all common shells named by family so they may be of use to those wishing a copy.

Our shell cards are a sort by type of shell.

Someone had a tasty dinner through this hole!!

We have all learned so much from our time on the beach, aquariums, and museums!!

If anyone would like the following materials you are welcome to download them for free!

Shell Matching Part 1

Shell Matching Part 2

Shell Matching Part 3

Parts of a Univalve & Bivalve Cards

All of  the photos used in the making of our cards are my own. The shell sorting cards are in two different tones and this was for our children to highlight the shells we found on the West Coast.

The cards cover primary & elementary work given the age range of our two children (you decide what works for you) and include:

• a set of shell matching cards with the type of shell family that they belong to
• univalve & bivalve definition cards with sorting headers
• parts of a bivalve & univalve shell cards with descriptions and definitions these cards are a little more elementary

If you do not have shells available for the object to card match, you can still do card to card matching. These can also be cut into two part cards for more elementary work or 3 part for earlier introductions.

We are using the above cards as two part cards for Xander. He matches the definition to the cards. I also have a control set that we use more like a nomenclature book.

I hope you find these useful!

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This post is linked up at Living Montessori Now!!