How to age bivalves lesson

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HI! Future Ticia 2024 here, I’m updating this how-to-age bivalves lesson, partially because some of the sites I linked to are now defunct, and partially because I want it to be more useful for you. This was part of our Swimming creatures science lessons, and this particular sea shells mini-unit was wildly popular. It would be a great one to do after a trip to the ocean when your kids has filled their luggage with sea shells to bring home.

Oh wait, it was me filling the luggage with sea shells to bring home.

But, I now return you to past Ticia 2012, I’ll pop in from time to time to provide commentary.

Oh, and there are now affiliate links in here.

How to age bivalves science lesson

This was going to be the last shell post, and then I realized I had a bit more to tell you about.

How to age bivalves lesson supplies

Apologia Swimming Creatures (this was our spine book for the year), sea shells (ironically the cheaper shell sets are more likely to have the types of shells you need for this lesson because they are more common), or if your family likes clams, you could buy some clams to eat, and then wash and keep the shells, magnifying glass (this is the closest to the one we own, which does not seem to be made anymore)

Why bivalves gain more ridges

Hi, this is Future Ticia 2024 back to add in some more scientific information, and hopefully a video or two.

Okay, that went substantially faster than I expected.

This one is substantially longer, but also has a lot more information in it.

Aging our bivalves

how to age bivalves science swimming creatures biology 1st

With bivalves, as they get older they add new ridges.  This particular shell has an excellent example of it.  You can see the ridges very clearly.  We went through the different bivalves and looked to see if we could guess how old it was.  I thought at first that it was supposed to be one ridge per year, but that doesn’t make sense for how long they live.

Future Ticia says that the marine biologist up on the 15-second video says that is a true statement, but if you look at this shell, it clearly has more than 1 ridge, and she claims it happened in 6 years.

I also notice it’s similar to trees, the thickness and space between ridges is dependent on what resources are available as the bivalve shells grow.

I did some quick searches, but the best I could find is the thickness of the ridge is dependent on what sediment is in the area.  The thicker the ridge, the better the protection.

how to age bivavles science lesson for apologia swimming creatures science lesson

We studied our bivalves, looking at them under our stand magnifying glass. I never realized just how much use I would get out of this impulse buy. I firmly believe everyone needs one of these for their science lessons.

I had planned after this discussion to make our own “pearls,” using play dough, but discovered all of our play dough was dry hard rocks.  So, we left that part of our lesson out.

Okay, I guess I couldn’t make it too much longer.

It really was a quick science lesson, which is good when working with young kids.

More first grade learning fun


Comments

4 responses to “How to age bivalves lesson”

  1. Too bad there isn't an easy way to tell their age! The ridges are interesting, though!

  2. Shells are so interesting to collect. I have been enjoying your shell posts.

  3. An Almost Unschooling Mom Avatar
    An Almost Unschooling Mom

    I didn't know that about shells – interesting!

  4. Troll boogers – ewww! I am getting more and more tempted to read HP1 to Anna too.

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