life science

From Egg to Sea Turtle Unit Study & Lapbook

We made a detour on finishing up high school for a quick nature read about sea turtles. I chose Our Sea Turtles as a spine and we weren’t disappointed. Today, in sharing from egg to sea turtle nature unit study and lapbook, I’ve rounded up some awesome links and ideas for you.Also, I created a fun lapbook for about upper elementary to middle school for your kids. Of course, you can decide what ages to use the lapbook for because I never make my lapbooks baby-ish. I use cursive font and avoid baby-ish or goofy looking clip art the best I can.

First, let me show you how much we loved the book Our Sea Turtles. It is a 282 page reference book with beautiful color pictures on each page.

It has several sections, including:

The Species, Sea Turtle Form and Function, Life Cycle and History, Ecology, Our Sea Turtles on Land, Our Sea Turtles in Water and Saving our Sea Turtles.

One thing we learned right away that we did not know was that not all turtles in salty waters are sea turtles.
Sea turtles are truly marine animals and one of the things that makes them different is their shell. Sea turtles don’t really have the ability to pull in their head and limbs inside although they can still withdraw their neck.

Although we know that sea turtles are mostly herbivores, we did learn that they won’t pass up some easily captured prey.
Also, we learned about some of the predators of the sea turtle. The Northern raccoon, ghost crab, fire ants, laughing sea gull, bobcat, fish crow, dolphinfish, crevalle jack, tiger shark and bull shark a few of the sea turtle predators.

What was really interesting was learning what was inside an egg. Sea turtles have an amniotic egg.
The features of a sea turtle egg include a papery eggshell that protects but is porous (to air and water vapor), and an allantois (fetal membrane) which facilitates respiration and helps with waste.
The yolk sac supplies nutrients for the embryo and it shrinks as the turtle grows.
What we didn’t know was that the amniotic sac is like the equivalent to the placenta in mammals.

Sea Turtle Lesson Plans, Guides, and Background Information.

Along with reading the book  Our Sea Turtles I really loved a lot of these resources.

This Sea Turtle, a Journey of Survival 12 page educators guide I found super helpful and used a lot of the information from here to do the lapbook. So be sure to download the guide to use for the lapbook.
This 22 page pdf educator’s guide has a great roundup of vocabulary words.
Grab this fun coloring page with crossword puzzle activity.
You love this Sea Turtle Inc. site for lots of lesson plans and hands-on ideas like make a sea turtle habitat, make a magnet sea turtle for older kids (cool), and a template to create your own hatchling for younger kids. So cute.

Then here is a free discussing and activity guide to use with the book Sea Turtle Science which is also good.

This 9 page elementary school guide has some great question and answers or facts about sea turtles.
A super nice 180 page educator’s guide with printable lab cards and hands-on ideas. Nice!
You’ll love this massive 160 educator’s guide One Ocean from National Geographic on who lives in the ocean which includes background information on sea turtles.
Grab this beautiful and colorful sea turtle poster.
Use these free maps to add in some geography to your unit study as you learn about tracking the sea turtles.

This Grenada Fun website has a wonderful graphic for teaching the  parts of a sea turtle along with background information. It’s the one I used for making the minibook in my lapbook.
You’ll love this ultimate sea turtle guide.
Look at this fun prek sea turtle unit study over at Homeschool Preschool.

Sea Turtle EASY Hands-on Ideas and Activities

There is a fun and easy build a geometric turtle activity that is in the  Sea Turtle, a Journey of Survival  guide I shared above.
Build an origami turtle.
Grab all these wonderful printables over at U.S. Fish and Wildlife like fact sheets, coloring pages and posters.
Look at this fun hands-on idea for the littles over at Munchkins and Beans to learn about sea turtle life cycles.
Make this clay sea turtle over at Buggy and Buddy.

Make fun egg carton sea turtles over at Crafty Morning.
I love this easy sea turtle paper plate life cycle craft at Wikki Stix.
I love this tin foil turtle for some art.
Nice coloring pages and make great covers for your lapbook although I have created some for you too.
Sea turtle templates for sewing.

What a fun keepsake – do a hand print turtle craft.
Make a 3d turtle craft.

Sea Turtle Media:

How Baby Sea Turtles Find their Way Home.
This is a great graphic for Sea Turtle Facts.

Then also, our unit study reminded us of the co-op we had where my sister brought a turtle shell Native American craft made by one of her Native American friends. I love when we have a tie in to what we learned before in one of our co-ops.

Then of course a family visit to the ocean is a great field trip.

The Galveston coast near us had these new and beautiful benches that are part art and part bench.

Local schools got to decorate them with facts about the marine life that live in the ocean. It not makes for a beautiful enhancement to seawall, but a fun way to learn facts.

I think doing a mosaic like this would make a great art project too.

You’ll love this lapbook.

You’ll want to grab my free Sea Turtle lapbook and this is a facebook only follower freebie.

Be sure you join my Homeschool Dynamics by Tina Robertson facebook group.

The minibooks include:

What Makes a Turtle a Sea Turtle?
7 Species of Sea Turtles layered book.
What Are the Sea Turtle Parts?
The Anatomy of a Sea Turtle.
Sea Turtle Tagalongs trifold book.
From Egg to Sea Turtle Life Cycle Circle book.
The Struggle to Survive.
Predators petal book.

If you’re looking to do any spring nature studies, you’ll want to get a few of the NaturExplorers. I love those studies for multiple ages.

Welcome to The Nature Book Club Monthly Link Up No 4.

The Nature Book Club is a monthly link up beginning on the 20th day of each month.

It’s a monthly book club devoted to connecting children to nature.

There is a theme for each month in 2018. We welcome your nature book and activity related links!

The Nature Book Club theme for April: Eggs

The Nature Book Club is brought to you by these nature loving bloggers which are your co-hosts! Are you following them? If you don’t want to miss anything, be sure to follow each one.

Here are the co-hosts, their choices of books, and activities for the month.

 

Bird Nest/Eggs nature study pages from Barb at Handbook of Nature Study

From Egg to Sea Turtle Unit Study & Lapbook from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Free Gustav Klimt Artist Study Pages from The Usual Mayhem

Felt Bag Handicraft from Wind in a Letterbox

Clay Eggs Project from Table Life Blog

An Online Book Club choice from Hide the Chocolate

Egg Scavenger Hunt with an Egg Carton from Rule This Roost

A Mermaid’s Purse: A Surprise Discovery Within from Eva Varga

Citizen Science – Nest Watch from Eva Varga

Egg Identification Nature Bingo {Free Printable} from Freshly Planted

Eggs Nature Study Free Printable Word Search from Faith and Good Works

You’ll also love these other nature studies:

• Free Arctic Ground Squirrel Lapbook & Unit Study Resources 
• Colorful Winter Bird: Northern Cardinal Lapbook & Unit Study
• Easy and Fun Nature Study: Beautiful Birds

Upcoming theme: May The Nature Book Club Theme – Wildflowers

Party Rules

• Choose an engaging nature book, do a craft or activity, and add your post to our monthly link up.
• The link up party goes live at 9:00 a.m. EST on the 20th of each month and stays open until 11:59 p.m. EST on the last day of the month. Hurry to add your links!
• You can link up to 3 posts.
• Please do not link up advertising posts, advertise other link up parties, your store, or non-related blog posts. They will be removed.
• By linking up with us, you agree for us to share your images and give you credit of course if we feature your posts.That’s it!
  Let’s party.