All about Turtles
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:
- One Tiny Turtle (Nature Storybooks)
- Ocean: A Photicular Book (Photicular Books)
- Miles and Miles of Reptiles: All about Reptiles (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)
- I Wonder Why Snakes Shed Their Skin
- Reptiles (Kingfisher Young Knowledge)
- The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide
- Feathers, Flippers and Feet (DK Readers Level 2)
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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Freya using the Parts of a Turtle card – she really enjoyed learning all of the names for parts of a shell!
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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.
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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
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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!
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Small world and Messy Play!
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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!
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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]
As always I hope you enjoy this post, if you have any questions or feedback please email me at info@montessorisoul.com
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Jo
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