The Letter T

This week we did the Letter T. Our topic for the week was Turtles.



We visited the library the week before and found 2 really great books on Turtles. They were targeted for an older age group, but I skipped all the detail and simplied it when Seychelle I were looking at the books together. 

We used, Interrupted Journey: Saving Endangered Sea Turtles by Kathyrn Lasky &
Sea Turtles by Frank Staub

Together with our non-fiction books we used, The Smallest Turtle by Lynley Dodd.

Using all three books I focused on the journey of a turtle from being laid in an egg on the beach to getting into the big blue sea. We also touched very gently on turtles being an endangered species - what this means & why this has happened & what we can do to stop them from becoming extinct. (Living on a tropical island really helped this week! Seychelle could really relate to this study and how pollution, like paper bags & fishing nets, which we often see left on the beaches, kill turtles).

As we do every week, using the startwrite program I typed up short sentences with information about turtles for Seychelle to copy.  Her handwriting has improved significantly since we started using startwrite.

This week's craft was so much fun!

Together we cut out shapes to make a turtle, out of bubblewrap. We painted this green.  Then we painted buttons with many different colours and stuck these on the turtle's body.  We also used 2 black buttons for the eyes. While this was drying we raced down to the beach (400m's away). Collected some sand & shells. We used adhesive spray glue to stick the sand to a big piece of white paper. We then glued our turtle to that paper (now covered in sand) & added the shells as the finishing touch!

 We ended up doing 2 turtles. Generally the first time we do the craft, we do it together & then the second time Seychelle willl do it on her own (with help if needed).

We continue every week with Handwriting without Tears. Here is a photo of Seychelle's letter T's.

Seychelle loves cutting out paper and making her own creations. I allow her to have her own little sellotape & scissors. On her own she cut out shapes, colouring them in and creating turtles. I had already printed off some turtles for her to colour in (from a google search), so she used those turtles to help her create her own.

We have a time each week that Seychelle will play with playdough - this week she decided to make her own playdough turtle!

We also decided this week to do a leaf hunt (we would use the leaves to make a T for tree).
The leaf hunt was lots of fun. We took a plastic bag each & walked around our neighbourhood (which is bush) looking for different types of leaves.  We made some amazing discoveries.

 

 


We came back the house & started making our tree. Using a black marker, I outlined the shape of the tree and Seychelle painted the blue sky and the trunk of the tree brown. Then she stuck all the different coloured leaves we had collected on the tree.




With the left over leaves we did leaf prints & leaf rubbings with crayons.

 



Seychelle then had some fun with green paint!

Another craft we did this week was making trees using tissue paper. This was a fun craft to get your hands and fingers sticky and gooey.

I modelled a tree shape for Seychelle - which she copied onto a big white piece of paper. She then painted the trunk brown, the grass green & painted a few brown branches. Using a toilet toll we ripped little pieces of paper and put them into a bowl of glue.  We placed these sticky pieces of paper onto the branches, manipulating them into different shapes and sizes. When we had covered all the branches with little sticky pieces of toilet paper we got out the green paint!  We made 2 different types of green  - a dark everygreen colour (adding some black paint) & standard type green. We then painted all the pieces of paper (still wet) with the different colour greens.




After we had finished this tree together Seychelle was keen to do another one on her own. I provided the materials and allowed her to construct her own tree, with supervision.


Another craft we did was making handprint trees. We did 2 types of these. For both types we made the tree (trunk and branches) from a brown handprint. Then using green paint & her fingers Seychelle made the leaves out of fingerprints. For the second tree we used a left over leaf (from the leaf hunt), dipped in green paint, and made little leaf prints on the branches.  As a finishing touch we used red paint and a clean finger to make little apples.