Ask an expert


We were very happy to welcome Ben's Dad to our class to talk about turtles. He is a professor at UF and his specialty is amphibians and reptiles. The children had many questions and he answered them all.


We had previously read in a book that a turtles shell is its backbone and today we got to really see how it's backbone is built into its shell. 


We learned that turtles are reptiles and that all reptiles have scales. We noticed that the shell of a turtle are actually scales and they are made out of the same stuff that human fingernails are made from. 


We also got to see a turtles beak which it uses to bite it's food but it doesn't chew it's food because they have no teeth.


We also got to touch a fossilized turtle shell that is millions of years old and learned that turtles were alive when dinosaurs were on the Earth. Cool stuff!


We want to send a giant thank you to Ben's Dad for coming to talk to us. We learned a lot.




Popular posts from this blog

Insect Compositions

Image
We often use loose material compositions in our classroom as a way for children to tell us what they know. We set out various materials, stones, gems, paper and sticks. These representations are not permanent.  We take a picture and then the material gets sorted back and the activity is ready for the next child.
Read more

Summer Art Show

Image
This summer has been an incredible journey into the world of art. It started with a family trip to the Harn museum that inspired explorations into color,lines and shapes, which led to the discovery of different mediums and techniques.We read books about famous artists like, Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollack. Somewhere around mid summer we provoked the idea of finding a way to show our art to our families .We talked about our trip to the museum and the children were excited to make an "art show" for their parents and friends. Our art show was a huge success.  We documented the work that the children did with the intention of making our summer visible to our parents. This type of documentation lets those not in our classroom day to day understand our path; where we started and why and how we ended up where we did. Our art show was not only an opportunity to show off our beautiful  works of creativity, it was also a way to sho
Read more

Painting Storm Clouds

Image
We learned there are different types of clouds, and that not all clouds bring rain. We can tell the weather by the kinds of clouds that are in the sky. Storm clouds are called cumulonimbus. They are tall, puffy and grey. They bring the rain. We invited the children to paint storm clouds. They turned out beautiful! Look for the them in our work room to the left of our back door.
Read more