More at the Beach

One other thing that I have noticed with children at the beach, and pretty much anywhere, is that they love rocks.  The toddlers will pick one up and walk around with it in their fist.  The older children will stick them in their pockets or pails if they are at the beach.  So with that in mind I set up a few activities around rocks while we were at the beach on Monday.

They stacked rocks into towers.

Went on a scavenger hunt to find rocks to match the pictures.

They counted rocks.  

First matching rock to rock on the pictures then counting them.

But the most popular was painting rocks.

What is an activity that you have done around rocks?

Painting Egg Shapes - Part 2 Stones

On the second day of painting egg shapes with corn syrup

we used stones.

Lucky we live by the ocean so we have an abundance of rocks. 

While painting on the rocks I notice the children

were more sensitive to the stickiness of the paint.

But it didn't stop them

 from enjoying it.

We noticed that the colours didn't show that much on the grey rocks

but if the rock was lighter or whiter then you could see

colours.

It’s about Stones and Outdoors

Our local StrongStart centres are attempting to take our families outside more.  We have decided to close our centres one day a month and hold our programs outside.  Today was the day.
           
I decided that my centre would go to the beach.  There isn’t much at the beach, this time of year, except stones so I planned around them.
                     
             
                
The first activity was to build a rock tower.  How many rocks are in your tower?
   
            Finding the right rocks and balancing them took a lot of effort. 
               Our towers weren’t too high but we made a lot of attempts.

             
A second activity was to create a picture using stones, driftwood, seaweed
                                             and sand.
 
      A couple of families worked a long time with their pieces of art.
 
Making their own frame with stones then standing the driftwood upright
                          with decorations hanging off.

                         
      
                 A third activity was a stone scavenger hunt. 
The idea is to search the beach for rocks that are similar to the pictures.

This was a great activity searching and finding unique rocks.  The children love collecting rocks and it helped them look a little closer.  I wish I would have
                       brought some magnifying glasses.
              
They found stones to match all of the pictures except a stone shaped like
                                    a letter of the alphabet.

               
 
       Another activity, a favourite and easy to set up, was painting stones.

                
 
Using paint chip cards to find stones that are the same colour was our
                              final stone-focused activity.

A few non-stone activities.
                
Using tools from the classroom, kitchen and homemade we experimented
                        to see what marks they would create.
   
The cookie cutters worked really well.  I’ll have to remember to bring
                        more for our next visit to the beach.

     
              
              Painting on logs with water was another favourite.

Also going to get more water and taking some time to explore was just as
                                            much fun.


I brought a tent to play in as well as a spot to warm up if the wind picked up. 
                 It turned out to be a spot to listen to stories.
            
         And of course we had snack with hot chocolate and apple cider.
 
One comment I heard several parents say was that they don’t usually think about coming to the beach in the winter time.  Today’s outing may change their minds.