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!