T is for Turtle/Life Cycles of Turtles

So we are gearing up for Kai's preK year of home school preschool.  I don't think he will be attending an actual preschool so I am forcing myself to get more commited to schoolwork and a more "strict" schedule to try to get him ready for kindergarten.  As you know, he is a very spirited honey badger kid that really tries his best to get his own way.  This doesn't bode well with school haha.  So I am hoping to help him adjust to having more structure this year.  And having a lot of fun in the process.

He is really interested in life cycles of animals and I love sea turtles so that is where we are starting.

Field Trips:
 We went to the local farmers market and they had all kinds of awesome life cycle puzzles and figurines and a life cycle game.  It was perfect timing for us to learn about life cycles and have fun.  We also went to the local children's science museum.  They are surrounded by wetlands so we took a walk and looked for turtles.  They also have large turtle exhibit inside that we counted turtles in.

Science:
I downloaded these free sea turtle life cycle nomenclature cards from Teachers Pay Teachers.  We are going to use these to learn about the life cycle of the sea turtle.  I also bought a pack of Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Green Sea Turtle for him to use with these cards.  Of course if Owl would quit swiping half of the them this would be a lot easier.  No swiping swiper.

Sensory:
I made a sensory bin to demonstrate sea turtles life cycles and to let Kai get his fill of sensory goodness.  I used blue water beads to be the ocean.  Destructo and Owl got to help the turtles hatch from a sensory bin containing kinetic sand and ping pong balls.  The ping pong balls were the turtle eggs since they are approximately the size of sea turtle eggs.  (They also had a giant T on them for Tennessee Vols since that was all I could get.  But I ran with it since T is for turtle.  haha)  We made a nest in the sand and then I used Easter eggs to put little turtles in so Kai could have them hatch.  He then had to quickly make the sea turtle run to the ocean before a predator (or his brother) got them.  Both boys loved it and played with it for days.

Important side note, you want to rinse the water beads daily though or else they mold really quickly.  I did not know this and had to buy more.

Math:  We used the pack of Turtles to work on basic addition.  Kai would pick a foam number out of a bag and a second number.  Then he would use the turtles as counters to figure out the answer.

 Language:  We read
My Very First Encyclopedia With Winnie the Pooh and Friends: Animals  and The Encyclopedia of Reptiles, Amphibians & Invertebrates.  The pooh bear one is a great book and details the differences in mammals, reptiles, etc.  The other book is not a children's book per say but it has all different species of turtles and lots of other info.  We picked out our favorite turtles.


Internet:  We watched this Sea Turtle Video.  I really like these science videos because they are short and very informative.  They have a ton of different animals.

Craft:  We made sea turtle sun catchers.  I let the boys stick tissue paper onto clear contact paper.  I put a layer over the top of the stuck tissue paper and then used Oliver's Cloud B Tranquil Turtle  as a template for the head and legs.  Easy peasy and super cute.

Fine Motor:  

I had bought Magnetic Color Cubes which are amazing for fine motor (but not for kids who could swallow them for obvious reasons.)  Destructo used them to feed all his turtles that I mentioned above.  He was feeding them a certain amount of pounds.  It was too funny (and mostly all on his own.)

I also did the turtle transfer activity on Nurturing Learning's blog.  I had Destructo pretend he worked in a sea turtle sanctuary and had to help the turtles.

So there you have it.  Turtle week.