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Learning at the Beach

May 21, 2022

There is something about the beach with the crashing of the waves, the sand in your toes, and the salty air that makes life a little bit better.

The weather is getting warmer, and many people plan trips to the beach. Whether you are heading down for a long weekend, a whole week, or just a day trip, the beach can be educational.

And - with so many different and fun educational activities at the beach; your children won’t even realize they are learning!

"To me, the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves–the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?" – Walt Whitman

Nature Study at the Beach

Nature study may be one of the most apparent educational experiences at the beach. In many ways, it happens naturally as children see the world around them. They begin to pick up shells, ask about seaweed, or search for treasures in a tide pool.

You may want to pick an area of study before going to the beach and learn a little before your trip. Alternately, you can let your children find what interests them at the beach and then study a little more when you get back.

Either way, I recommend bringing along a few items to help with your nature study.

First, a good field guide will be very beneficial in finding out more about what you are seeing. We love Peterson's First Guides for young children, but for the beach, we have found that it can be nice to have the small folding laminated guides that won't get messed up if they get splashed.
Next, I recommend a bag or bucket for collecting interesting finds to study further or bring home. We are careful not to remove any living creatures (except the fish we catch to eat), but we love collecting seashells and sea glass.
Finally, a small magnifying glass is a fun way to get a closer look at different objects. You can find inexpensive plastic ones that won't get messed up in the sand and saltwater.

Possible Areas of Nature Study at the Beach

Shell Collecting
Tide Pool Study
Seashore Birds
Sand Dunes
Sand Dollars
Conchs and Whelks
Fish

Can Fishing Be Educational?

In addition to nature study, you might want to do a little fishing while at the beach. My children, especially my boys, love to fish, and they could spend hours fishing every day if I let them.

The primary benefits of fishing are family bonding, fun memories, and a tasty dinner. However, there are also lots of educational opportunities that come with fishing. Children can learn more about the parts of the fish; watch the gills at work, and even learn more about the mechanics of how the fish maneuvers through the water.

A fresh fish can be a great first dissection project for older children. You can fillet the fish to get the meat and then use the carcass for dissection. They can learn to identify the different internal parts of the fish and discover more about the dissection process without the odor of a regular dissection specimen.

Art Ideas at the Beach

If you walk into any home décor store, you are likely to find a section of beach-themed art and décor. The beautiful colors, vibrant animals, and stunning shells make for great art.

If you have children that enjoy art, you could simply provide them with art materials and let them draw what interests them. You can also take pictures or have them use their memories to draw or paint a scene from the beach once you return from your trip.

Another fun art option is to do shell rubbings like you would do a leaf or bark rubbing. Simply place the shell under a piece of paper and rub over it with a pencil or crayon.

You could also do a collage using small objects and sand from the beach. They can collect a little sand, small shells, etc., and then glue them together into a collage. This is a beautiful way to have a souvenir from the trip.

"The sea is as near as we come to another world." – Anne Stevenson

Consider also these fun tutorials:

Beach Field Trips:

The beach is often a field trip in itself, but if you are there long enough to want some other options, there are many great related educational field trips.

Often you will find aquariums or animal rescue centers near the beach. These are a fantastic way to learn more about all of the nature you have been seeing while at the beach. Some people enjoy this as a rainy day activity; however, we have found that they get more crowded on rainy days. Our family enjoys using them as a nice cool break in the afternoon's heat.
Lighthouses make for an exciting field trip! There is so much history in our lighthouses. Be sure to do a little research about the lighthouses in the area before you go. Sometimes you can even climb to the top of the lighthouse. My husband and children tell me that the views are incredible!
There are several national seashores here in the United States, which are seashores preserved through the National Parks system. Each park has various amenities and features, but they often have a visitors center with educational information, videos, and programs.

Ideas for Further Beach Study:

If you want something more than your traditional beach study topics, you can dive deeper with a study on lighthouses. There is so much history and science involved in the lighthouses.

For older students, you could do a study on salinity and ocean water.

Another fun study would be kiting. The open beaches are often a great place to get enough wind to fly a kite, and you could do experiments to determine the best kite shape or conditions. There is also a lot of great history with kites.

Educational Beach Books

Living near the coast and loving the beach, we have an entire bookshelf devoted to books about the beach. You don't have to be as excessive as I am to use books to help you with your educational beach trip.

A few of my favorite fun beach books are Suzanne Tate's Nature Series and the Burgess Seashore Book for Children. These books have fictional storylines but include factual information about different sea animals. We read our copy of Danny and Daisy Dolphin from the Nature Series so many times that it fell apart, and we had to buy a new copy.

For non-fiction informational books, we like Marvels of Creation Sensational Sea Creatures from Master books, and 1001 Questions Answered About the Seashore.

Being from the Carolina coast, we also really like the Nature Guide to the Carolina Coast for more specific information. If you go to the beach in a different area, there are similar books for each state or region.

You might also want to get some fun beach books to strew through the house - or while you’re staying at the beach - to just enhance your beach trip!

The books below are just a few suggestions to get you started.

Hint: Me First is a super fun beach story that is always a huge hit with any child I know who has read it!

Me First (Laugh-Along Lessons)A Day at the Beach Dark Day in the Deep Sea (Magic Tree House (R) Merlin Mission)The Sea Turtle Mystery: The Boxcar Children Mysteries, Book 151 The Seashore Book A Day at the Seashore (Little Golden Book)S is for Sea Glass: A Beach Alphabet

I hope these ideas help you add a little learning to your time at the beach. However, I also want to include a gentle reminder. There is value in just relaxing on the sand, building sandcastles, and splashing in the water. Fit in the learning opportunities as they arise, but do not be afraid to enjoy some time with your children at the beach.

Are you planning a trip to the beach?

Do you plan to learn while you are there?

This post is from contributing writer, Dawn Peluso.

Dawn is a passionate follower of Jesus, wife to Chris, and homeschool mom of four. In her spare time she loves to read, hike, and write on her blog Schoolin’ Swag. She enjoys reviewing curriculum and helping moms find the right fit for their families. Some of her favorite parts of homeschooling are hymn studies, living history, and read alouds. She and her children also enjoy incorporating food into their studies as often as possible.

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The Colorado Plateau: Part 2 - Monument Valley & Mesa Verde National Park

July 9, 2019

Our trip to the Colorado Plateau began with a day at The Grand Canyon.

As we continued to drive northward into Utah we watched the landscape change. Our tour director began to talk to us a lot about Indian reservations and the practice of sending American Indians in the late 1800s and early 1900s to Indian Boarding Schools.

How had I missed this part of American history?

We watched a movie with Judy Garland - The Harvey Girls - and learned the history of the railroad coming through the west.

So many movies have been filmed in Monument Valley. My son said he felt like he was in the movie “Cars”.

I remarked to my husband that the kids were learning more on this trip than they ever could have sitting at home reading history books (even the best living history books). There is nothing like schooling on the road and traveling with an expert guide!

(Read Part I to hear about how we experienced the American Southwest this summer with Trafalgar’s Colorful Trails of the Southwest Tour.)

Monument Valley

When we arrived in Monument Valley (in the heart of a Navajo reservation) it was late afternoon. The weather was getting cool and it was quite windy. Our director handed out bandanas, and (as you can see) my son used his to its full potential.

I knew from our itinerary that we would be having a jeep tour of Monument Valley and then eating dinner prepared by the Navajo, with a little bit of music afterwards.

None of us were very familiar with Monument Valley, but quickly recognized it from so many iconic photographs we had seen over the years.

Monument Valley is like a national park, but it falls within the jurisdiction of the Navajo Nation's 27,425-square-mile (71,000 square kilometers) territory in the Four Corners region of the United States. Of that 17 million acres, more than 91,000 acres are set aside as Monument Valley Tribal Park — a space larger than Arches National Park. - source

Taking a tour led by a Navajo was a wonderful experience. We were able to go down into Monument Valley, off of the paved roads, and learn the names of the different monuments and a more detailed history.

I was, again, very thankful for our Trafalgar guide (Gordon), because he was well versed in the history of this area. It is part of our nation’s history that I think we could easily gloss over or even miss.

I was sitting in the front of our tour bus on this day and asked our guide a lot of questions. He gave me book recommendations and subject areas to further research with the kids when we got home.

(I was in homeschool mama heaven!)

White people recognize the valley from the movies, but that’s the extent of it,” says Martin Begaye, program manager for the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department. “They don’t know about its geology, or its history, or about the Navajo people. Their knowledge is very superficial.”
- The Smithsonian Magazine

I’m so thankful we could go deeper - beyond the “superficial” knowledge, and really talk about the problems the Indians have faced over the past centuries, and the problems they still face today. Our guide mentioned Jim Thorpe - the football player - who had attended an Indian School in Pennsylvania. It was little things like this that kept my children engaged throughout our trip. (In fact, we are reading this book aloud right now because we wanted to find out more about Jim Thorpe and the schools.)

We needed to pinch ourselves a few times as we were riding in a jeep through Monument Valley. The beauty was overwhelming, especially with the sunset on the horizon. I never knew rocks could have so many beautiful colors. The kids were quiet - just taking it all in. We had been transported to a bygone era.

We ate dinner outdoors - prepared by the Navajos - and enjoyed some entertainment - then we were on our way again.

Our guide showed us a movie as we traveled - a documentary about the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. I had NO IDEA! We will be reading about the Code Talkers later this summer!

After Monument Valley we traveled further north. Our tour bus pulled over and our director said, “I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll go home now.”

None of us were sure what he meant, but it quickly became obvious that we were in the spot (Mexican Hat, Utah) where Forrest Gump decided to stop running and return home! There were cars pulled over on the side of the road, and people were standing in the middle of the road taking pictures.

Doesn’t it look familiar to you? Grant had to get out and run down the road. I’m a total dope because you know what I did? I cried. I loved that movie so much and it was overwhelming to me that we were in that spot and it was so very beautiful.

(Forrest Gump movie night is coming up soon!)

Mexican Hat, Utah - the site where Forrest Gump stopped running

We stayed that evening at the Desert Rose Inn (Bluff Utah) - but it was just a quick stop because we would be up and out the next morning at 7 a.m. and head to Mesa Verde National Park!

Mesa Verde National Park

Both of my children remembered reading many years ago (through some of the living books we had gotten in a Sonlight package) about the Anasazi cliff dwellings - those apartment style dwellings carved in the side of cliffs stick with a lot of people, I think!

Our guide pointed out that he would refer to this group of people as the Ancestral Puebloans.

Mesa Verde literally translates to “green table”, and as we were driving along the highway which borders one side of the park, you could see that long “green table” off to our side. We learned that these groups of Indians would scale the cliffs and create dwellings purely for self preservation. Farming was easier on the tops of the “tables” and enemies could be more easily spotted from a higher vantage point.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the intricacy and preservation of these cliff dwellings astounded all of us!

Learning Resources for Mesa Verde National Park - Cliff Dwellings

The above picture was our lunch view that day! We found a covered picnic spot (that our tour director staked out for us) and sat for an hour just listening to the birds and looking at these dwellings. It’s a lot to take in when you are sitting in front of it.

This particular area is called Cliff Palace. Building here began in roughly 1275 CE - and by the end of the 13th century these canyons were EMPTY. How and why the people disappeared is still a mystery. Another sobering fact: roughly 50% of the children born in this area died before the age of five.

And - wherever there is a bookstore I am sure to be. The gift shop had quite a good separate bookstore - I picked up a few books (I’ve listed them among the resources below.).

There could have been a lot more to see and do in Mesa Verde, but we had approximately 4 hours in the park.

Our tour, Colorful Trails of the Southwest, was designed to highlight many of the sites on the Colorado Plateau. We got a wonderful overview of the area, and I would love to go back one day and focus specifically on just a couple of the parks we were only able to briefly see. The biggest gift we received was being able to steep ourselves in Native American culture. We gained knowledge, appreciation, and a reverence for this group of people who have historically been marginalized all in the name of “progress”.