Our Trip to Fossil Beach

This year for science Linc and I sat down and picked our curriculum together. We chose two from our program curriculum: Energy (which we will study after January) and Marine Biology!

So far we are loving our Marine Biology studies! We both have learned so much and each lesson comes with some super cool science experiments! This past Monday though, Tuck and I decided we ALL needed to go ahead and get out of the house for a little bit and take a much needed FIELD TRIP!

We just studied sharks (which was awesome and one of the more anticipated lessons we’ve been looking forward to) and I had been researching all kinds of activities or adventures we might be able to do to pair with our lessons. A friend of mine had told me about a beach a little ways from here called Fossil Beach.

The idea here was to hop in the car and drive (yep it’s a a drive) and then hike and hunt for some shark’s teeth and anything else we could find. My main goal was just to gather my family together and spend some quality one on one time together: no phone calls, no work, no computers! Just us three together outside doing something FUN… did I say outside and out of our house?!

Luckily we accomplished just about all of it! We drove (it’s about a 2.5 to 3 hour drive from here to Montross, VA). We talked A LOT in the car and on the hike to the beach and on the way back! We played and splashed in the water! We searched and searched the beach and this is where it gets funny!

We THOUGHT we were finding shark’s teeth or some kind of old fossilized shark’s teeth! I mean none of us really researched what we were looking for and we had been there for like 2 hours already. We had our colliander’s and our sifters and we were in it to win it. Then a new family came down to the beach and within about 5 minutes that grabbed the real deal and showed me! MAN I felt embarrassed. It was an actual TOOTH! DUH! Which ironically I had asked Tuck about in the beginning… like aren’t we actually looking for teeth teeth like the ones you find on a necklace?!

So then of course I was even more motivated to find AT LEAST 1 real shark tooth and not these dumb rock things we “thought” were fossilized teeth! We drove 3 some hours, we can’t walk away with just rocks!

Long story short, I found a super tiny baby shark tooth that if you weren’t looking very hard you would miss it! You almost need a magnifying glass to see it. Tuck finally found another baby-ish one as well. Linc came over later and while we were struggling to tell him that “hey, guess what we weren’t finding shark teeth but hey THESE right here are shark teeth..” He was like yeah I know guys… while I was digging deep over there, I got one too.

And ya’ll.. his was HUGE! It was the biggest of the day we think! Go figure!

Anyway… we had a blast and we each came home with a shark tooth we found and that makes me incredibly happy! Linc had a blast so that makes it an adventure totally worth the day trip drive!

First homeschool field trip: total success!

We totally recommend Fossil Beach if you’re looking for a place to just adventure for the day with no real time worries! It’s a great place to pack up and go get lost for a couple of hours!

Things I would do if we go again:

• Pack a Lunch/ Bring a cooler!
• Bring a chair to sit in! (Your back gets tired from all the bending and sifting! I sat in the sand for a bit… but it would have felt nice to have a chair.
• SHOVEL!! They say no shovels but soo many people had shovels and they were finding some good stuff!
• A lot of sifters or mesh stuff to help sifting. A colliander doesn’t work great. It works but the actual sand sieves are the best! 1 per person at least.
• A clear locking lid container to put your precious finds INSIDE! Linc brought his rock/gem pouch but man I was so worried they would break or fall through.
• Bathing suits! This was an epic fail on my part! We wore like athletic clothes/ hiking stuff with tevas and flip flops. You are totally in the water while searching for shark teeth! WEAR A SUIT! (At least we packed a change of clothes.)

Here are some more photos from our trip!

Linc was teaching me his sand sieving technique he learned from some “new friends” after he found the large shark tooth! 😉