T is for Turtle

We've had a busy week with Valentine's day activities for two of our three days. We glued "trees" to Letter T for our alphabet books. There are so many things that start with letter T that would make for great lesson material, but I came across something I haven't done before and got a little excited about how it would turn out. Turtles.

I was at Costco earlier in the week and saw these new children's books that are in the shape of animals and creatures. They were really cool and had cute stories on the inside. I decided that a day of learning about Turtles in preschool might be a lot of fun--for me and the kids. The story was about how lucky the turtle is to always have a home to go to. Kids can relate to some of those basic necessities at such a young age.

We are nearing the end of the alphabet and are working on letter T. Perfect! We've been learning about the scheduled topic, transportation, over the last few days with Mail carriers and buses. Turtles. Yep, that would be something that follows with the letter of the week and make for some cute crafts and games.

I found some of these great activities at www.makinglearningfun.com and www.kidssoup.com. These websites are becoming some of my best resources for ideas in a pinch. I was surprised at how much these little ones knew about turtles already. [Thank you, Discovery Channel ;) I saw the saw the same program that Alayna was describing about the turtles crawling on the beach and burying their eggs in the sand.] Turtles are simple creatures. We learned how they are reptiles, that they lay eggs like birds, and use their shells as a means of protection.

We made a little turtle necklace, using milk caps as the hard body. The beads were a fun way to add color and keep little hands busy as we talked about some of the traits of a turtle.

We ran out of time on Thursday to finish our cute turtles made from paper bowls. Mr Lincoln will have to share a few minutes with us on Tuesday, so that the kids can decorate the "shells" with hard split peas and add the soft body inner body.

Turtles are interesting creatures and the kids enjoyed spending some time learning about them.