For the love of shells

 'Mummy come over here! Oh Mummy look! It's so pretty, wow!'

Sophia and I had visited a shell museum, the building of which had been built with the specific intention by a gentleman who wished to display his and his wife's shell collection after she passed away. This initial collection has been added too over the years by other donations from over the world.


The other visitors were amused by Sophia running round thankfully. It was very obvious she was in awe, excited, and desperate to explore all the shelves and cabinets. 

She asked questions, listened to me reading the information cards, and was very engaged.

She was allowed to choose a shell from the shop for her and her sister. 

On return back to her grandmother's house I did not expect her to make reference to it again particularly. 

She disappeared into the garden with her siblings. 

Within an hour I was invited to her shell museum, and had to pay a fee to enter the garden to the exhibit. 

She had four exhibition pieces: two larger unique creations, one of which featured a stone she had brought from the zoo she had visited. 

There were also two birds nests, made from leaves and shells, which reflected her lessons prior to going away on holiday. 

A few lovely, thoughtful ladies from my LinkedIn community have kindly been sharing pictures of bird nests recently, from an empty nest, to one with eggs in it, to one with hatched baby birds squashed in it. 

This has sparked a mini project and they've been reading up about them and watching about birds for a few weeks now. It was lovely to see that this interest had transcended into her shell museum. 

The trip had cost £9 and that included two momentos from the shop. I was incredibly happy that it held great educational value for her beyond just seeing some pretty shells. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning From Your Environment

Image
There is so much potential for learning on car journeys. This time Sophia's attention was caught by seeing electricity pylons and wind turbines and she was avidly asking questions about these. I briefly introduced them to her and offered to set up some follow up science educational YouTube videos at a later date. Good old 'Dr Binocs' came through and the children have been eagerly learning about fossil fuels, renewable energy and electricity. Sophia has started writing down her thoughts and knowledge on electricity in her new science book. It is a great sidestep from their current topic of light, which is being learnt enthusiastically. They have loved their light experiments, as simple as they were, including going into a dark room and shining a torch, seeing how a pencil seems to change when placed in a glass of water, just with a light shining on it. Observing what materials allow light to pass through and which cast shadows, and performing shadow puppet plays on the wall...
Read more

Role playing Is A Serious Business!

Image
The morning period is personally the best time of day for lessons for my girls. They are alert, focused and raring to start lessons, consequently breakfast lessons are an established learning time. I have a captive audience, they are in the kitchen with me anyway learning how to prepare the food, tidy down and set the table. This session can be the best for attention span and concentration out of the entire day, so I have learnt to capitalise on this precious half hour.  This morning we learnt twenty spellings from two word families. They are storming through their word lists, quickly approaching the 200 mark in only a couple of months. I cannot recommend this learning style enough, the girls are retaining their spelling knowledge and are actively using the words in their artwork in their free time. Today they also requested spelling tests to be their handwriting practice, and did further spelling practice on top for another half an hour through choice.  The rest of breakfast ...
Read more

Always be thankful

Image
 It was December 2021 when Miss Jo, The Children's Coach contacted me and offered the girls free places in her January zoom class. This was the tutor who had organised and ran the summer fun project which the girls had been nominated and awarded for bravery. The girls absolutely loved her as a teacher and had immediately bonded with her. They wrote her letters and talked about her every day during this project.  I took her up on this very kind and generous offer and the girls had a regular half an hour zoom class every Thursday on the theme of gratitude. The girls were the youngest ones in the class and they handled it really well.  Sophia wrote the classes on the calender, scheduling in the lessons, for the month. Kira took a postcard written to her by Miss Jo, which she had received the previous year, to bed with her every night until the classes took place. She read it to me as her bedtime story.  The first thing Kira said to Miss Jo on class, was to thank her for...
Read more