The spring is a great time to go fossil hunting around the coast. The winter storms have loosened rocks from cliffs and thrown stones up from the sea bed up on to the beach to be investigated by sharp eyes.
Children often like to collect rocks (I think there is still a tomato box in the loft full of my childhood finds!) and many children are fascinated by dinosaurs and creatures that lived along time ago. To find your own fossil is a truly life affirming thing to do! Looking for fossils also encourages children to observe things very closely, an important skill.
Find a likely location.
There is a wonderful website http://www.ukfossils.co.uk/ that will help you find a suitable beach for fossil hunting in your area. This website is very good because it tells you if the beaches are accessible with children. I have used this website many times over the years and often look at it before we take holidays in the UK
How will I know that I have found one?
You are looking for a pattern in a rock that is quite obvious. Look for circles, stripes, changes in texture and colour. There are many books you can buy to help you identify your finds and pages on the web too.
Tools
We never take tools on our fossil hunts, we just use our eyes and take home anything we can pick up. If a fossil is embedded in the rock, we take a good look at it and take a photograph.
Picnic and hot chocolate
If you are taking children out and about in the spring when the weather is changeable remember to wrap them up to keep them warm. Don’t forget that small children can get cold much more quickly than adults do. A supply of hot chocolate and biscuits can really cheer up little ones and then they are happy to stay out a bit longer.
Our finds:
On our half term trip to the beach we found some pebbles and a larger stone containing fossils of ancient corals.
Happy fossil hunting!
