The Sea Turtle

We have been working with sea turtle materials for 2 days now.  Tomorrow I will clear it off the shelf but am leaving it one more afternoon by request.  I took away a few things that were random & explored yesterday to fit in a sorting by size activity with paper shells.

The life cycle of a sea turtle is covered with books based on the life of the turtles.  There are 3 part cards available on the life cycle with matching figurines.  We have not explored the sea turtle parts which is something I might look into for the next lesson.

Inadded a unit on sea creatures also so it wasn’t just about turtles.  I plan on going into the classification of animals soon & will be setting that up next week alongside landforms to aid geography.  There are 3 part matching cards to different ocean life animals.  Some fun matching cards geared towards kindergarteners wherevthevdrawn image is to be matched with an actual image of a sea creature.  Then there are labeling words to those pictures.

I managed to add 2 sensory experiences with an ocean type theme by raking rice and dying it blue as water.  I added blue gem stones to be rushed out with a spoon.  And plastic fish to act out the water idea.   Sand and sand dollars became a last minute idea where I created a sand dollar book to explore what they look like alive.  I then laid out our sand dollars so they could understand what they were looking at.  We talking about exoskeletons and to my amazement Maggie asked me where their skeleton was before I could tell her. She us just beginning to realize animals and creatures share similar traits & characteristics and even body parts.  Through this she is learning an appreciation for life.  Little subtle things I notice that display this emotion are leaving flowers on ant beds. That happened today.  And freeing insects, even spiders.

The first turtle setup above.  It took up the entire shelf.  But I managed to get language & practical life activities out of it.  Even coloring is art & fine motor work.

Maggie has taken a liking to the sea turtle book specifically the part about pollution & how turtles get sick from that pollution & the care workers who clean the turtles up & get them well for release again when they’re healthy.   She was very drawn to this & that gets me excited she will be A preservationist & be very interested in learning things about her environment & how we affect that environment every day.   She’s a forward thinker.

Lily gets started on the 3 part life cycle of the sea turtle while maggie explores getting spooning stones from rice.

Lily completes the 3 part life cycle cards for the turtles. She begins with the control cards.

Maggie spooning & sifting sand.

Sea turtle.  3 part cards.

Lily difts stones from sand. Maggie colors ocean creature coloring sheets.

Maggie matches picture to object.

Lily is getting great at using the sifter to sift out rocks now from sand and rice.