She Sorts Seashells

Sort sea shells by the seashore.

Submitted by
Kayla Chong

Spend quality time strolling down the beach with your little one as she collects rocks and shells and then spend quality time reading a magazine as she sorts through them.

Shells or pebbles:
In assorted shapes and sizes.
A beach:
A great activity to do on your next vacation. Not going to the beach? No prob! Have your kid collect rocks in the yard rather than shells and encourage her to sort them by shape, size and color or buy a couple of bags of shells from your local craft or dollar store.
A plastic pucket:
To collect the shells in.
Shell sorter:
Your kid
Shell collectors:
You and your kid

Next time you're at the beach, head off down the shore with your kid to collect shells and small rocks. Pick up as many as you possibly can. The more you collect, the longer it will take your kid to sort through them…and that means more "you time"!
Once she's got a bucketful (or two) of shells, head back to your towels.
Have her dump the buckets out onto the sand.
Encourage her to start sorting them by shape, color, size and type, i.e., have her put all of the crab shells in one pile and the mussel shells in another.
Buy yourself a few more moments of peace and ask her to count how many shells she has in each pile. Does she have more big shells or little shells? More mussel shells than crab shells?
Then have her mix them all up again and challenge her to re-categorize them. If she sorted the shells by size last time, have her sort them by color this time. If she plays along, you may get to read a whole chapter of your novel!