Welcome to our “Turtle-riffic Turtle Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to oh-so-adorable turtles! For this day, we started learning about the scientists who study and take care of sea turtles! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on sea turtles scientists!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
By now, your little one should already be familiar with turtles and sea turtles. But, they may not know that studying turtles is an actual job!!! Now, like anything there are pros and cons but it’s definitely worth looking into or at least learning about! These sites are great for quick facts or intros.
- What Type of Scientist Studies Turtles? from Chron
- What is it ACTUALLY like to be a sea turtle biologist? from SciAll
Speaking of resources, these are all GREAT sites dedicated to turtles with TONS of information and resources. We used these throughout the week for our sea turtle days:
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- What is it ACTUALLY like to be a sea turtle biologist? from SciAll. This webpage (from the intro) also has a 6.5min video and describes what it’s like to be a sea turtle biologist!
- Sea Turtle Week The Mini Series Episode 2: Sea Turtle Hospitals by Sea Turtle Week
- Turtle Time! | What Sam Sees by Nat Geo Kids (7m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our snack of the day, we picked a super easy & healthy one – green apples & green grapes. We cut them into halves and set them up to look like a turtle 🙂 Note: if you want to have a brown shell you could also use bosc pears or other types of apples!
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- Sea Turtle Scientist (Scientists in the Field) by Stephen R. Swinburne
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: TURTLE, SHELL, SEA, HERPETOLOGIST, SCIENTIST
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you were a turtle scientist, what would be your favorite part of your job? What about your least favorite?
- If you were a sea turtle scientist, what project or problem would you want to work on?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned:
- Turtle Wood Slice Ornaments: Wood slices are a great, easy activity for those who love decorating or painting. We picked up the smaller turtles from the Dollar Tree (those this seems to be a seasonal summer item). The larger sea turtle slices were part of a set we’ve used for our Dive into the Midnight Zone Week: Wood Ocean Animal Life
IMAGINATIVE PLAY
Imaginative play is a great way for kids to explore a topic but pretending they are part of the process. For our turtle scientist, day, we brought out a few turtle “friends” and our children’s toy doctor kit to let them help care for the turtles!
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
Since science is all about observation, recording data, analyzing, etc, we created a simple Field Guide for the budding Sea Turtle Scientist! This one is fairly simple – we’ve really just asked them to fill out basic information like the Species Name, size, habitat, migration, and other interesting facts. We asked them to use all they’ve learned so far to fill the pages out for the different types of turtles!
Feel free to use the Field Journal images above for your own personal use! and/or link back to and link this post!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Turtle Week Posts or Turtle Ideas, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
