This activity was refined for a Montessori classroom so you may prefer to have a large selection of shells for children to rummage through if you have them.
To make the shell book I just googled for colouring in outlines for the shells that I had.
It’s lovely to have a wide selection of art media including watercolour paints, crayons, pencils, pastels etc for the children to experiment with.
This is a great opportunity to talk about univalve and bivalve shells and even the life cycle of the shell.
You can also leave shells in vinegar and see what happens to them. The shells are mostly made of calcium carbonate so they will dissolve over time.
An excellent picture book is Julia Donaldson’s Sharing a Shell.
If you have collected some shells over the years you might like to decorate a piece of driftwood with them. (I’m not too keen on the poor star fish as I suspect they are farmed for this purpose but this was decorated driftwood was a gift.)
We have cut down our pilfering on the beach but allow ourselves one special shell in return for collecting any rubbish.
followthatchild.wordpress.com 
I love all the beauty and diversity of shells and find that children are often quite intrigued by them. I love to have one which they can put to their ear and listen for “the sea”. Meg:)
LikeLike
We have a big one, the size of your head, and the children often tell me they can hear the sea. I ask them if it is a nice calm sea or a rough and tumbling sea, which leads to some delightful conversations!
LikeLike