We love to collect seashells each time we go to the beach. Unfortunately, on our last trip to the beach, seashells were scarce. It’s the end of summer and all the beach goers must have scooped them up. We were able to find 2 fairly descent shells and added them to our growing collection.
For storytime today, we read the book, Seashells by the Seashore by Marianne Berkes. After this fun shell story, we got out all the seashells we’ve collected over the years. Then we sorted them into groups, by shape, color, texture, and again by broken ones and whole ones. There’s lots of ways to sort and classify items and these seashells were fun to work with.
Now I’m trying to come up with a fun way to display them. Here’s how others have been displaying their beach collections.
- Ocean Counting Book – counting using beach treasures
- Sand Jars – collect sand and give each beach it’s own jar
- Display Stands – for when you’ve found something really special
- Shadow Box – lots of seashells could fit into a fun box frame
- Seashell Crafts & Beach Crafts – fun ideas from Martha Stewart
How do you display treasures collected from the beach?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I saw an idea where you get a fish bowl, put sand in it and your shells. However, before you put the sand in you adhere a picture of the kids at the beach. It was cute.
Thanks for the great resources! I love the display stands…
What a cool idea! My boys would LOVE this. I wish I had the foresight to collect more shells at the beach this summer!!!
Jessica
http://www.momshots.com
I love the beach!!! I am so envious of your recent trip. It looked like a lot of fun and relaxation. Love the resources. I think I will check out some stands.
We love the beach too and have collected many shells over the years. Two of our three bathrooms are decorated in the beach theme. I bought glass cookie jars (one from walmart, one from target) and put the sand and shells in. It makes a great display of natures treasures! Also, a few years ago we used some of the same shells and made Christmas ornaments with by warm gluing shells to a stryofoam ball. Attach a ribbon on the top with the place and year where you collected the shells. Hope this helps.
Great ideas! I am in the process of putting together something like the sand jars. We had fun collecting sand from our various adventures this summer.
I love this post because I lome me some shells. We have made them into a memory game:
http://thewritestart.typepad.com/the_write_start/2008/07/another-shell-game.html
a mobile, a counting game, and a name recognition game:
http://thewritestart.typepad.com/the_write_start/2008/06/the-shell-game.html
I’m in the process of figuring out what to do with our most recent finds. I’ll let you know what we come up with!
I have my seashells in tall glass vases displayed w/ photos of times at the beach-in beach themed frames. Everytime I see it I long for the beach- and all your beach themed posts-are making me want the same thing :) aahh the ocean! love it!
I love the idea of a fish bowl. It might even be fun to put your beach sand into a real fish bowl with a live fish. The seashells could go in too. Fun.
OTJenH – I love the shell memory game. Fun ocean stickers.
My boys love to play with their seashells, they usually become part of the pirate treasure, or mark the hideout cave on a deserted island. Yesterday I actually saw a big clam shell flying around with a plastic bug inside. They have to be pretty study for this kind of play, so I’m liking some of your other ideas.
Love all the ideas! I have to admit we live a walk from the Pacific Ocean and take all that my girls bring home for granted! They love collecting it but I have no ideas what to do with it. And these are all fabulous ideas. I love those MS ones too. I’ve seen a mobile somewhere of large shells all just hung in a line. When I was small we used to make shell people. Sometimes we have used baby food jars and put in sand and smaller shells/rocks and put a piece of fabric on top and put a little note with it to say ‘a little piece of New Zealand’ on the note. Very cute and for family that can’t come to NZ they get something special from our beaches ;)