All about Turtles

All about Turtles
October 4, 2014 No Comments Teaching Ideas montessorisoul

We had an amazing holiday in Mexico and we were lucky enough to swim with turtles:

 

We have loved learning about turtles and we wanted to share some of the things we have done. To start I had a collection of books out. I have struggled to find many books related to turtles, certainly story based ones (if you know of any please share!). The ones I have used today are:

These are all affiliate links to Amazon.co.uk

Freya and I enjoyed sharing the One Tiny Turtle book. It gave some great opportunities to discuss turtles and their life cycle.

Montessori turtle activities

I have made Montessori Terminology/Three part cards for the Turtle life cycle, Parts of a turtle and Parts of a hatchling. After the book we went on to look at some of these cards.

Download turtle cards for free here:

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Parts of a turtle cards
Turtle life cycle
Turtle life cycle
Freya using the Parts of a Turtle card – she really enjoyed learning all of the names for parts of a shell!
At nursery Seb has always loved the life cycles. At first I set the activity up with just the models and cards. He matched all of the cards but lost interested. He wanted to move on – Seb struggles with tidying but with some encouragement he put everything back on the tray.

Turtle painting

Freya loves art and wanted to do a Turtle picture. I love that Freya loves art and like to encourage her to explore different techniques. Today I got out the wax pastels and we talked about colour washing. I bought some Brusho #Affiliate

Wax pastel drawing I love the fact that Freya is reproducing the flipper prints in the sand that she saw in the book we had just looked at. We then used brusho to create a colour wash – Freya loved the way the white eggs stayed white, so while she was still working I wrote a ‘secret story’ with Freya to go with her painting. She told me about her picture and they I wrote the words in white wax pastel. I encouraged Freya to use adjectives to make the writing more interesting. I love the idea of ‘the sand crackling’.

 

Freya loves arts and crafts (hooray!) I have lots of other things that I want to try with Freya over the next few weeks so I have created a board on pinterest – why not take a look!

 

 

Turtle was resist picture Colour wash with brusho Finish turtle work

Small world and Messy Play!

Turtle life cycle
Ping pong turtle eggs
After doing the life cycle card with Seb earlier I decided that it needed to be more exciting. I had some shells and starfish already. We had read in the book that turtles like to shelter in the weed so I made some weed using felt, ribbons and green fabric. I piece of blue felt for the sea and light yellow felt for the sand. Seb loved this – he set the eggs and the hatchling on the sand and the young turtle and turtle in the sea! Fantastic!
Ping pong turtle eggs Turtle nest sand tray
As Freya has been enjoying the turtles and egg laying so much I made a sand tray for her. I had a Wild Republic Playset Different Turtles (12 Pieces)already – the turtles are different species but Frey didn’t mind. The models are really good quality and life like. I used ping pong balls as the turtle eggs. Freya noticed I hadn’t put water in the box for the sea. As I wanted the focus to be the hatching we used a bit of silky fabric for the sea.

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And relax!!

We found a wonderful DVD A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventure (2D + 3D) [DVD] #affiliate. This is a wonderful tale of a turtle Sammy searching for his friend. Travelling through many seas it discusses the environmental issues that face turtles in our modern world.

As always I hope you enjoy this post, if you have any questions or feedback please email me at info@montessorisoul.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/montessorisoul please like me to keep up to date with my posts as I make new materials all of the time.

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Jo

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