what's in your collection?

On Dinosaur Train, the kids collect various things. Shiny collects shiny shells. Buddy collects dinosaur facts. Don collects anything that strikes his fancy. Tiny collects...her Tiny Doll? I think that's the only thing in her collection. Nate is a collector like Don.

From the time he could walk, Nate wanted to stop in parking lots and collect rocks, shiny objects, dirty things, and anything that could slice his finger off. If we were playing outside, rather than just passing through, he would fill my pockets with rocks. The only exception was when there were puddles. He always wanted to throw rocks, but I only allowed him to throw them into water. He took advantage of that every chance he got.

For the longest time, he never cared to take these collections with him. But eventually, after enough Dinosaur Train talk of collections, he decided he did want to keep a collection. I gave him this mesh zipper bag (it used to serve as my on-the-go toilet paper carrier, but it is a tiny bit too small for my Coleman camping TP).

hung on a nail in his room, high so no kids can pull it down and scatter tiny things all over my floor

He is now rather selective of what he adds to his collection. Often he chooses only one thing to add at a time. Last week, he came home from school with a piece of mother-of-pearl. I thought he would want to get out all the pieces in his collection, sort them, hang on to some for a few minutes. But, no. He just handed it to me and said, "Put this in my collection."

To date, he has 7 bottle caps (3 Coca-Cola, 1 Sprite, 1 Fanta, 2 AFCO), 5 tiny shells, 3 cashew nuts still in the shell (I'm worried about these rotting), a big spiky shell (found in our yard), 61 Euro cents, a stone carved into a heart and painted blue, a piece of white glass, and a piece of mother-of-pearl.