Emergent Curriculum Creeping Out of the Grass

Last week we found an Eastern Box Turtle on the playground!  It was super exciting and interesting!  We have started building a unit around turtles to build on this spark of interest.

The day we found him, we talked about how to hold him safely.  Any animal that has a mouth could bite, so use two hands and keep them away from his mouth.  He eats food like leaves and berries, meal worms, and buggies.

(We know he is a male because he has red eyes, bright orange spots on his arms, and a slight indentation on his bottom shell which helps him stay balanced when mounting his mate.)

We talked about how his shell was hard like finger nails.  When he feels scared, he can tuck is head, legs, and tail into the top and bottom parts of the shell to keep them safe.  We noticed his toenails that help him dig.  We observed that this was an animal with bones, dry scaly skin, and no hair.  He does have eyes, mouth, and nose like us.

We read Mossy by Jan Brett later in the day.  This beautifully illustrated book of fiction helps reinforce the idea that wild animals are happiest in their own habitat.  Eastern box turtle populations in this area have been declining due to poaching for pets, getting crushed under cars or lawn mowers, and deforesting the turtle habitat.  We released our box turtle after we handled him just like Mossy was returned to her natural home in the book.

Since we could not keep the wild turtle that we found, we further explored turtle habitats and what turtles need to live in the Block Area with turtle toys, stones, and silk plants.

We created several turtle homes complete with vegetation, pools of water, rock climbing mountains and more!

Seeing the children's interest and knowledge increase through stories and play following a real-life experience has been turtle-ifically awesome!

5 Ideas for Spring Sensory Bottles

Sensory bottles are mesmerizing and fun!  Here's our most recent collection at Harmony's House.

1.  Golden sun- add one bottle of gold glitter glue, a few pebbles to aid mixing, and warm water.  Shake and watch the glitter swirl and move.  Spring comes with more sunlight and warmer days!

2.  Rainbow spots- add multiple colors of water beads, just a sprinkle of each color to water.  (We left air in the top of this bottle to allow for better swirling.  Instead of shaking this bottle, swirl it around like a tornado and watch the rainbow spin!)  Spring brings out the colors in the world.

3.  Bug safari- fill the bottle half full with rainbow rice and add a few toys insects.  (We used small bug erasers.)  Shake up the rice, roll the bottle around, and find the bugs!  We counted four butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and bees hiding.  Springs wakens the insect life!

4.  Blue skies and glitter rain- add one bottle of blue glitter glue, purple beads, chunky iridescent glitter, and water.  The beads help the glitter mix better but can also be observed falling slowly through the solution.  Some glitter floats up, some glitter sinks, just like water moves between the Earth and sky in the water cycle.  April showers bring May flowers.

5.  May flowers-  trim desired silk flowers and leaves, add flat beads as you fill with flowers, and push down with a straw to pack the flowers into the bottle to reach desired fill.  The beads move around the flowers with a rainstick sound, but they also look like beautiful jewels hiding in the flowers.  Flowers are some of the best parts of Spring!

Easy Easter Exploration

Got some empty eggs and water?  You've got what you need to make this super easy, but fun, Easter explore table!

We used "nets" to try to catch, count, and name colors of our eggs.

We opened the eggs, filled them with the water, and watch it fall out like rain.

We pretended to crack the eggs and watch the water fall out like a real egg.  We collected them and put them in our Easter baskets to tromp around with.  Best of all, we had some serious springtime fun!