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 turned our attention to what we could do to help save sea turtles! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on sea turtle rescue!
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
Since we’ve spent a few days learning all about sea turtles, we then turned our attention to what we can do to help sea turtles survive and thrive. But first, if you’re little one isn’t familiar with the concept of animal rescue, conservation, or endangered species, these might be helpful:
- Conservation by Britannica Kids
- Endangered Species by Britannica Kids
- Endangered Species Act by National Geographic Kids
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:
- Sea Turtle Week The Mini Series Episode 4: Sea Turtle Threats by Sea Turtle Week (6m)
- Sea Turtle Week The Mini Series Episode 5: Ways to Help Sea Turtles by Sea Turtle Week (5m)
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 went a different route… Our little ones are not fans of fish, so instead we used goldfish. BUT we also looked through https://www.seafoodwatch.org/ to see what types of seafood are best for turtle-friendly choices in our area.
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:
- National Geographic Kids Mission: Sea Turtle Rescue by Karen Romano Young
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, RESCUE, CONSERVATION
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!
- What are some things that you can do in your daily life to help sea turtles?
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 picked a few upcycled or natural items that we could use to create some turtles. This helped encourage them to use or reuse what they had around them.
- Paper Bowl Shell Turtles
- Fruit Cup Turtles
- Rock 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!
- Turtle Conservation Primary Resource by National Geographic Kids. This National Geographic page has some good conservation resources (by grade range).
- Sea Turtle Tracking by Sea Turtle Conservancy. This page shows the migration of actual turtles – it’s a great way for kids to“connect some dots” and see real data on what they’ve been learning!
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!
