My reason for collecting shells and fossils was to support my work on Evolution. I've taught "Variation" lots of times by collecting data from the children (which I will continue to do) and by showing appropriate photographs or drawings (breeds of domesticated animals and garden varieties of fruit and flowers). This time around though I thought I'd try giving the children a mass of seashells, getting them to put them into groups (species) and then looking at variation within each group. I got the idea when we had scallops at Christmas.
I'll blog later about the outcomes from this approach.
