she sells sea shells by the seashore...

My goodness... I can't even type that properly let alone say it out loud! Seriously, it took me two tries to type it right!

Yesterday we spent the afternoon studying sea shells.

We started by reading this book....
Shells, Shells, Shells by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
I must admit, I almost didn't read this to the kids. I had requested it online from the library without knowing anything about it. When I picked it up on Monday, I almost returned it right then because it looked too simplistic to interest my two. Well, you know the old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover"... it applies here. The concept and the illustrations are simple... a bear cub and his mom go beach combing for shells... but it goes much deeper than that. We learned the terms mollusk, mantle, pigment center, operculum, and gastropod. We also learned the difference between bivalves and univalves. It was all done is such a gentle way that the kids really got it. And for an added bonus (especially for Alex) there is a smattering a corny shell jokes throughout the book. It looks like the author has a few other science related books that I may have to check out when we cover other subjects.

After reading the book above and looking at some of the reference books I checked out, we moved on to working with our shell three part cards...

They're a free printable from the Montessori Materials website and you can find them here. The kids not only worked on matching the label to the photos, but they also sorted the shells by univalves and bivalves. It was a nice little exercise to bring home what we had read earlier.