A walk on the beach

Yesterday during ESY we made a snack called "A Walk on the Beach". This is a trail-mix type snack and each thing represented something that you might find at the beach. The kids LOVED this. We added more to it by having them count out the number of pieces they had and had discussion on why different items were used. So here is the "recipe": (BTW we found everything we used at Walmart)

sand: green sugar sprinkles (we currently have green sand in our classroom so this worked out great!)
drift wood: pretzel twists
sea shells: mini colored marshmallows
fish: goldfish crackers
whales: Whale crackers
life preservers: fruit loops
octopus: gummy octopus
"stuff" that washes up on the beach: dried banana
and my most favorite...
beach pebbles: chocolate rocks

Check out how cool these rocks are! They look so real. The kids thought I was nuts when I ate one.

Here are some pictures of the finished product. Notice how different student displayed their differently.

This is a close up of the octopus!

You could do so much with it. you could graph it, sort it, 1:1 correspondence, make up a story about what you found on the beach using the trail mix for props.

Let me know if you use this and what you do with it. I would love to hear other people's ideas!