World Turtle Day

STEM
 World Turtle Day is about becoming more educated about turtles and learning what we can do to help. There are 7 different species of turtle in the world and all are on the endangered list. To gain the children’s interest I thought as a group we could make a fact sheet about turtles. I started with the question ‘What can you tell me about turtles?’, the children were enthusiastic about answering this question and a many responded with these answers:
“They swim” -Saven.
“They have shells.” -Chloe
“They lay eggs.” -William
“They hide and burrow in the sand.” -Charlotte
“They live in the sea.” -Ellie
“They have baby turtles.” -Mila
“Their shells are slippery.” -Ted
We then continued our group discussion by researching together some more facts about turtles, together we watched a short National Geographic video on turtles. This helped the children to answer the final four questions I had for our fact sheet.
Q1. How many types of turtles are there in the world? A. 7 species.
Q2. Where do turtles live? A. In the water (ocean/sea). -Ellie ; Sometimes come on to the land (the beach) to lay eggs. - Irene
Q3. What types of food do they eat? A. Fish, meat, plants and leaves, worms, insects.
Q4. What features do turtles have? A. They swim. Their shells are good for protection and are made from the same thing as our fingernails. Baby turtles are prey for other animals such as birds when they are still on the beach.
The children also learnt that turtles are solitary animals and don’t really associate with one another. Finally William and Oliver wanted to name the turtle that I had drawn on the board next to the heading ‘World Turtle Day’, we named him Timmy the Turtle. Tomorrow the children can make their own Timmy the Turtles