With this beautiful weather we’ve been having lately, it’s a great time to hit the beach! A great activity to remember those summer trips to the beach is to make a sand bottle. Start with a clear, straight-sided container (a cleaned out glass olive-oil bottle would work great) and fill the bottle with layers of different sands (either from different beaches or even different areas of the same beach). Even if you only have two types of sand (or sand and small pebbles), you can alternate layers in a pattern of stripes. Carefully funnel sand into the container, tipping the container slightly to create wavy layers. Be sure to fill the cotainer to the very top, and seal it with a cork or screw top, so that the sands won’t move around and mix together. If you want, you could also make simple labels to note where and when the sands were collected.  Another very simple idea to preserve treasures from a beach trip for a lasting memento is to simply take all the small shells, pebbles, driftwood, etc. that your child inevitably picks up and wants to keep, and store and label them in a pretty glass jar. When you get home, have your child clean the treasures in some water with a sponge or rag (they love doing this), and then let them dry. Fill the glass jar and affix a label to remember where the treasures are from. Here is my son’s “treasure jar” from our recent vacation to the New Jersey shore.

In our Creepy Crawlies class this month we talked about the differences between insects and spiders. Spiders are not insects, they are in a group of invertebrates called arachnids and have eight legs and two body parts versus an insects’ six legs and three body parts.

This month, you can try to preserve a spider web. Explain to your child that a web isn’t really a home for a spider, it usually acts as a trap for catching small insects that the spiders eat. Not all spiders spin webs and webs can vary greatly. The most familiar in this area are the orb webs made by garden spiders, which you can find on fences, window frames and on garden plants.

Preserve a web (first checking by tapping gently on the web that it is unoccupied!) by mounting them on black paper that has been sprayed with hairspray. Place the paper in a cardboard box before spraying it to protect the area around you from the spray. Work quickly because the hairspray needs to be slightly tacky. If you want the strands of the web to stand out, sprinkle them first with talcum powder. Spray the paper with a protective coating once you get home.

This month’s nature activity was created by my own four-year old son who decided recently that it would be a good idea to paint that beautiful pinecone he had found. I thought it was a great idea, and several brush strokes of tempera paint and globs of glitter glue later, we had a beautiful piece of nature art to display! You could do this with all kinds of natural materials – pine cones, rocks, sticks, shells, feathers – whatever your child finds interesting! Bring it home, supply some paint, glitter glue, markers, or other art supplies, and just see what your little one comes up with. This could be a good idea for a mother’s day gift this month – a hand-painted rock paper weight! For a truly professional finish, glaze the finished product with some clear gloss found at a craft store. 

Another related idea if your child finds any interesting rocks, is to give them a bucket of water and perhaps a sponge or rag, and let them clean the rocks in the water so they can see all the beautiful colors come through. My son can literally do this for an hour in total fascination.