Tips for Parents: Beaches Build Kids' Science Skills

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Impressively stuffed with treasures from the sea, the curio cabinet holds court from the corner of the desk. Shells there are aplenty, from Mexico's Gulf of California beaches, along with quartz crystals found on a mountain in Arizona, and part of a deer skeleton found in a Northwest forest. If this collection were to be named, it might be called Things That Caught My Eye. The collection belongs to science-education researcher Jolene Hinrichsen, who pointed out that being a good observer is a skill that science requires.

Gathering collections is a great way to get kids into building the fundamental skills of science: observing, organizing, and classifying. One kind of collection that fascinates both kids and adults, says the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory researcher, is a collection from an area. For example, beaches.

The Northwest coastline has sandy shores and rocky shores, Jolene points out. Both lend themselves to collecting seashells -- and a whole lot more. "Seaweed, little critters, almost always a crab's shell, perhaps the pinchers, bones from seagulls." She herself found a seagull skull with beak. All of these things can become part of this collection.

"Look along the strand line," Jolene advises, explaining that "this is where everything is stranded when the tide goes out." If you get lucky, you might find starfish or bottles. "Everything comes back to that strand line."

Wondering about things in the collection leads to questions that help start the classifying process, such as, What do all these things have in common? Why do I find these particular things here?

"What rocky shores and sandy shores have in common," Jolene explains, "is the salty body of water -- the ocean." What is different usually is the non-living part of the environment. What kind of weather is there? What kind of vegetation grows there? How cold is the water? How disturbed by people is the environment? How rocky is the area?

"Beaches in Hawaii tend to be very sandy and very long, and beaches on the East Coast tend to be rocky right up to the water's edge," she says. "Animals adapt to living in both places, but they're not necessarily the same animals."

Encourage the kids to discover and wonder on their own, without giving them directions, advises Jolene. Then, after the beach trip, suggest that they write a poem or narrative or make a drawing about their experience. "It likely will capture what they've seen. It helps kids to notice individual pieces of the collection and their relationships: Do these crabs in any way influence these shrimp? Does one prey on the other? What do they do when they see each other? Do they just wander by, or is there an interaction?" Kids can speculate and guess about what those relationships might be.

Beside ocean-related collections, there are a variety of other collections that kids and adults can assemble. Here are some ideas: plants, footprints (tracks), feathers, and eggshells.

As for naming a collection, choose a big name that's encompassing, like Rocky Shores or Sandy Shores. Or it could be a more personal name, like Things That Caught My Eye.

This column by Karen Lytle Blaha is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.