Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Reptile & Amphibian Challange

All the snow days are really throwing us for a loop here! But we finished up last week's theme on Tuesday with some activities that tested our memories of what we learned about amphibians and reptiles.

We started with a fact matching game. I created a set of animal traits and features that belong to turtles, snakes, and/or frogs. Children had to read the facts and decide which of these animals matches the description. For example, "I lay my eggs in water" would be the frog. "I am a reptile" would be turtle and snake.

I let the kids try to figure out the answers on their own or talk it out with their buddies. They then had to write the fact on a piece of paper and stamp the paper with the appropriate animal stamps. We had a lower number of kids at the center today because of snow, but the kids really enjoyed this activity and it was great for helping recap all the things about frogs, turtles, and snakes that we learned last week.

Since the snow impacted the number of kids who came today, I went ahead an stamped a couple extra sheets without the facts written. I'll have these ready so the kids who missed out can still contribute to the project, but I've just simplified the steps for them (and eliminated the need to take the paints out again!)

I also had a short craft- turtles and turtle habitats. We used egg cartons (cut up) as the shell of the turtle and then gave kids creativity and flexibility to draw an appropriate habitat surrounding the turtle, many kids made sea turtles swimming in the ocean or coming up on the beach, we also had some out-of-the-box thinkers use the egg carton to make a frog body instead of turtle shell!



Check our our hallway of frogs, snakes and turtles!!







Because numbers were on the lower side, it was a perfect day to take out the bearded dragon, JJ. It was my first time taking him out, Interestingly, despite all the begging I've been getting to take the lizard out, I was the only one willing to hold JJ for more than 5 seconds! This is really my first experience with reptile animal handling, so its a bit of a new adventure and small learning curve.... for example, I really need to figure out how to prevent him from getting sand EVERYWHERE!

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