Sharing Shells

Shells : selecting ....... sorting ....... sharing ........ swapping ........ selling ??

Selecting shells on Sutton Beach. Sifting through sand, searching for shells. Mousie and Teddy took this very seriously. Ducky and Kitcat helped for a while .....

...... but Kitcat couldn't resist the fun on offer. Jumping waves is a more energetic way to spend your time at the beach!

Mousie sorted her shell stash before we'd even left the waterfront.

Once we arrived back home the serious shell sorting began. There were lines of shells, some of them were categorised according to size and some according to type.

Teddy's final stash filled a small bucket. She was forced to tearfully dispose of many broken pieces.

Mousie also sorted her shells, some according to type, but mostly just random lines and groups.

She had a very hard time selecting which shells she would keep.

Kitcat didn't really have too much trouble choosing her final shell selection. She enjoyed washing, re-washing, rinsing, re-rinsing and then sorting her collection. She lined them up, she arranged them according to size, according to type, and even according to colour. Then she re-arranged, re-washed, re-rinsed and re-arranged again!

Finally, she choose her favourite shells. (After taking a few breaks to apply eye-shadow and lipstick).

Once the girls finished cleaning and sorting their shells they began sharing them with each other .... or at least that's what I thought was happening. Many shells, rocks and pieces of coral exchanged hands as I watched from the kitchen window while preparing dinner.

Then I realised that maybe it wasn't pure sharing that was going on in the pergola, so I started listening a bit more closely. It seemed that the shells were not so much being shared as swapped.

Then I heard the girls discussing various coin denominations and I assumed they had assigned different shells a monetary value and were actually buying and selling each other's shells, using other shells as currency.

When I eventually went outside to intervene (in what sounded like a rapidly-becoming-heated disagreement) I discovered that the noise I had assumed was the clinking of shells, against each other and on the tile floor, was in fact the clinking of real coins.

Teddy and Mousie had raided their piggy banks and were haggling over the price of certain prize shells which were currently in the possession of the other.

Of course I couldn't resist snapping some photos and making a scrap page of my girls and their shell enterprise.