The Dolphins at HEY have the job of feeding the centre turtles Grace and Myrtle every Wednesday. This is an integral part of their routine. We developed an inquiry project called the Turtle Project for Kate, so she could learn more about cognitive development in children, the concept of an ongoing routine, integrated learning experiences and the significance of project work which is a key feature of the Reggio Emilia Approach. This is the first blog in a 3 part series called The Turtle Project.
The Turtle Project began one day when Kate helped the children build an enclosure for the turtles outside and Angela brought the turtles out to be fed. Kate even held one of the turtles!
In order to extend Kate’s own curiosity, ability to ask questions and ability to investigate things with the children, we asked questions about things we wanted to know about turtles and then looked them up on the internet and then Kate made a poster from the information she had gathered.
Kate’s questions were:
What are turtle’s shells made of?
Why do turtles sunbake?
Why do turtles die? (She told me Michali used to have turtles but they died making a lovely link back to her own experience).
Kate typed in the questions into google and then we watched a weird and wonderful pets video on You Tube.
Kate then put together a poster with the information she gathered, which included pasting some actual turtle shell and then writing a poem about the centre turtles in 10 minutes (timer set).
Here is Kate’s poster - scroll right see slide show.
TASK: Watch the slideshow above and re-read your poster on turtles. Can you tell your coach 5 fun facts about turtles? What do human fingernails have in common with turtles?
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