Fourth of July weekend this year, we went to the beach. It’s like second nature for the kids to immediately go and scavenger for treasures wherever they go. At the park, it’s sticks and rocks; at the beach it’s shells and stones. The rocks and shells were just all sitting there in the beach bag, well ahem, sitting.
I set up a sensory bin for them to further explore the goodies they collected and set up several tools for them to use such as tongs, brushes, magnifying glasses, chopsticks and eye drop squeezers (is there a specific name for that tool?) with trays and an egg carton.
Here is the Picture Walk
Brushing off as much sand as they could.
Rinsing the rocks and shells and taking them out, using whatever means their heart desires as long as the rocks get cleaned and I could change the water before they really dig in. 
Fresh and clean water! Now, they play!
The session was filled with laughs and giggles as they added in some of their little toys or “friends” we would call them at home. The had fun taking the shells and rocks in and it to observe in their trays. We added a bath water color to add to the fun and watched as they changed the water slowly from translucent to blue. 
Throughout the week, they went back and forth to observe the pieces that were now clean and displayed in our egg carton. At one point, they even painted it with water color brush pens. I will most likely edit this post later on to include some of those finished painted pieces too.
Activity extension Ideas:
-Create a sensory play bin where we add in these completed pieces to their Kinetic Sand bin.
-Have the kids group them pieces by shells or rocks.
– Have the kids group them by color or size.
-Play I Spy describing the piece they are talking about.
– Have them explore the more or less concept in each category based on how they group them.
What do you like to do with treasures from the beach?
