DIY Beach Science....Exploring Tide Pools at Home

I am a huge fan of hands on exploration when it comes to early learning. I love connecting actual experience, inspiring reading materials, and a creation of some kind. The act of "Making" in reaction to "Exploring" is pretty awesome. It allows children and adults alike to reframe and reprocess information gathered during an outing or experience.

In this case we took our children on their first trip to see the ocean! We are often on the shores of the one the Great Lakes, so I wasn't sure if they would recognize much difference in the visual experience of water with no end in sight and sand beneath their feet. While there were some similarities, there was one thing that really caught their attention, something we couldn't find at our beach at home....tide pools!

We are now back home in Ohio, with no ocean anywhere near. However, the experience still effects our day to day. It's funny how travel, far or near, can shake you out of daily routine. Why is this a good thing? Because it awakens your senses and shifts your perception, allowing you to see the world anew. Any little bit of change can inspire and ignite imagination and creativity, especially when it comes to kids!

Last week, the ocean was calling me. I picked through the shells, surveyed our crafting materials, and glanced the vast array of natural materials we had collected over time, a lightbulb went off. We can make our own mini-tide pools and talk about this amazing eco-system in more detail. Perfect follow-up to our trip to the beach, no?

Whether you frequent the ocean, have never been, or like us have just introduced your kids for the first time, I think this beach science / art is perfect for all little hands to explore!

MATERIALS

If you are looking for a little beach science fun, start by rounding up your materials. This will be slightly different for everyone of course but here are some of the basics.

- Rocks

- Shells

- Dried Moss

- Beach Glass

- Cut Paper

- Any small animal figurines that relate to the sea

- Sand

- Water

- Shallow containers ( in our case, glass pie pans )

READING

Collect any books you might have around or take a trip to the library or discount book store. Find books, fact or fiction, that relate to the ocean. It would be great to find any that talk about shells or tide pools. We read "What Lives in a Shell" by Kathleen Zoehfeld. Another great one to check out is "Seashells, Crabs, and Sea Stars", part of the take along guides by Christiane Tibbitts.

ECOSYSTEM LIST

I had the kids help me name all the things they thought they might find in a tide pool. We had just visited a local nature center that had a wonderful tide pool exhibit, with a real life search and find! So we had these things fresh in our minds along with our ocean trip. Here is what we came up with:

- sea stars

- shore crabs

- hermit crabs

- seaweed

- sticky limpits

- shells

- anemone

- rocks

- kelp

- coral

CREATE YOUR TIDE POOLS!

Get creative with this! My kids created star fish with glitter tape and play dough for example. They also made limpits with cut paper and a hole punch : ) You can use anything you have on hand that might relate and/ or make everyone smile.

- Pour water in each pie pan (or whatever container you are using)

- Pour in a layer of sand

- Let the kids add the rest, checking off things from the ECOSYSTEM LIST as they go