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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Turtles

We are still doing our weekly science co-op with 2 other families and I've really neglected posting about it. We are doing Exploring Creation Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures. I am thankful to have 2 other creative moms to teach with and we really seem to compliment each other in our teaching strengths. And, we have a great group of 8 kids! I'll try to do better keeping up with our (usually) weekly meetings, as I think we have some great resources to share.

This post on turtles is from back in December and it is only from one of our 2 meetings. Here are some of the things we did:
From this site we drew our own diagram of a turtle's carapace. We also discussed scientific terms like "vertebral", "costal", "dorsal", etc.


We played an Adventure Game from Euroturtles. It's a great survival game which demonstrates how hard it is to survive as a turtle. Not all of your baby turtles will survive in this game! (Since we have so many kids, I made a large board for this - you could even do a chalk drawing outside - and we only played 4 kids at a time.) This game can also send you "backwards" and we were very proud of one of our little girls who kept being sent back yet stuck in the game. It was a great lesson in sportsmanship!

You can also play this game online! You can play the full version which starts with the mother turtle trying to lay her eggs on the beach, or the shorter version which starts after the eggs have hatched. After trying these games of chance, you might try the Brain Game version where you get to make some decisions and see how they affect your turtle.


While half (4) of our kids were playing the board game, the other half played Once Upon a Beach (scroll down to page 9). This is another neat game where you learn how hard it is to survive as a sea turtle. And, again, not all of your baby turtles will survive!
We made our own paper plate turtles from this site. I actually just threw these out yesterday and didn't realize I hadn't taken any photos. They turned out so cute!

8 comments:

  1. Dana, would you consider submitting this to the Hands On Homeschool blog carnival? This would be a great entry, as well as many of your other projects. Click here to submit an entry, and I hope to see you join in!

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  2. I really love this post! And I may suggest this idea in the future for one of our co-op sessions.
    About how long did the game take? We have ten kids in our co-op, do you think they could be split 5/5?
    Also, I looked on the site you provided, but I couldn't find the game board on it, only the cards, and set up stuff. Did that come from a different site, or did I just totally miss it?

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  3. Hi, Robin (and all). I just re-did the post. I had the link messed up and I fixed it. And, I added the other game we played. (When I first made the post, I couldn't find the link - and then I ended up posting the game photo with the wrong link.)

    I think each game took about 45 minutes. We actually made 2 copies of the game with the egg carton as you can only play 2 kids at a time. So, you could possibly have 5 play the board game and make 3 sets of the game and have a mom play one child? (We have a 3 or 4 year old, so we actually had a mom play one of the children, too.)

    Hope this helps! And, sorry abou the confusion.

    Dana

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  4. That is awesome! The post is better than ever now. And I totally am psyched to give the whole kit and kaboodle as an option at one of our co-ops. Both games look totally fun!
    Of course, I'll give you ALL the credit! *wink, wink*

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  5. Wow what a great co-op activity! Thank you so much for all of the links.

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  6. Dana, I've not blogged about MOzart. We've done Haydn though.
    Here are my composer study posts (all one of them!).

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  7. What a great list of resources! My kids 'saved' a baby turtle last year. It impacted them so much that I should have seized on that with a lesson...But then I wouldn't have had all of these links! Thanks for sharing.

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  8. we did that book as a co-op w/ 4 families, 10 kids total.
    We used the Live N Learn Lapbook
    to go through the book.
    Very memorable for the kids and the moms!
    You did the best field trips to go w/ your studies while you were here at the Pt Loma Tidepools, Aquarium and La Jolla Cove!
    laurie

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