Alphabet Cone Alphabet

Every year, Amanda Baker and her three children love to work on exhibits for shell shows near their home in Florida. “Getting ready for the upcoming shell shows, we try to come up with neat ideas on what to exhibit,” says Amanda. She and Dominic, Olivia, and Nicholas brainstormed on themes, including visual similarities of the shells, shells found after a certain storm, or shells from a particular area.

“The four of us always shell together, so we never really keep track of whose shells belong to whom unless it’s something amazing,” Amanda explains. “All the shells go into a community bucket that we all clean together outside (bleach and water bucket) before they get moved inside for oil and added to display vases.” The magic comes when each of the kids organizes part of the family collection into a scientific exhibit.

Eldest brother Dominic has won the Best Young Scientist Exhibit Award numerous times, and this year the family had some new competitors looking for the blue ribbon. “Dominic is now in college so both Olivia and Nicholas were vying to bring home the award this year,” Amanda laughs. “They’re pretty competitive with each other.”

Both started work on their exhibits in preparation for the Sanibel Shell Show in March, helping each other with their projects. “Olivia chose to exhibit all her Key West collections from one particular area and Nicholas chose the alphabet cones idea, not knowing whether we even had all of the alphabet letters or not,” says Amanda. “Nicholas worked really hard looking through many bowls and buckets of shell finds trying to come up with the whole alphabet. At one point, they talked about trading projects because they were frustrated but decided to keep their original projects.”

Amanda and the kids try to go out shelling together at least a day or two after a decent wind change or storm. “We went out after Hurricane Ian (2022), after big winds on Mother’s Day (2023), and after Hurricanes Helene and Milton (2024). We have buckets and vases full of shells!”

The chocolate alphabet cones in Nicholas’ exhibit are all from Dickmans and Kice Islands, Florida. Nicholas and Amanda went over his choices for each letter multiple times, asking everyone if they could see the letter on each cone. For the exhibit, he used transparent tape to underline the letter on the shell so the attendees and judges saw what he saw.

Nicholas won a blue ribbon for his “Now I Know My ABC’s” exhibit and the Best Young Scientist Exhibit Award for the very first time this year. On the last day of the 2025 Sanibel Shell Show, Nicholas was awarded the People’s Choice Award—Scientific Division, as voted on by attendees and other exhibitors at the show. “We got a phone call the night before letting us know he had won and had to be there early the next day to accept the award and take pictures,” Amanda says. “He was grinning from ear to ear!”

See if you can see the letters on each of the cones (facing page), and be on the lookout for more impressive exhibits from this family of conchologists.

Learn more about seashells

Learn more about identifying shells, the history of seashell collecting, great shelling beaches, and the lives of the animals who make the shells we find on the beach. Articles ›

No live shelling: Be sure shells are empty and sand dollars, sea stars, and sea urchins are no longer alive before you bring them home.

This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 50 September/October 2025.