The Life Cycle of a Green Sea Turtle

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Bean just loves her Safari Ltd. collection and today we added to it! We now have four more Life Cycles and today we learned about the life cycle of a Green Sea Turtle. Next week we will be visiting the New England Aquarium which is home to Myrtle, a green sea turtle who has lived at the aquarium since 1970. The last time we visited the aquarium, Bean was simply in awe of this giant turtle. I cannot wait to bring her back and see if she remembers Myrtle. And since we were talking about Myrtle when we started this activity, Bean decided to name her new mama turtle Myrtle. 

This was our set up, and it was a fairly simple one, but the great thing about it was that everything could be moved around to describe a different scene. We used a round platter, about 1 1/2 cups of sand, some small river rocks (fish tank gravel), a couple different shells, some coral, a couple plants and cut up Easter grass for sea weed. And, of course, our Green Sea Turtle family!

There is always a beginning, and in this case, it begins with eggs. Green sea turtles live their lives in the ocean, but when they are ready, they return to land to lay their eggs on hatching beaches. During the night, the female turtle crawls onto the beach, digs a hole away from the water's edge and lays up to 200 eggs! She uses her back and front flippers to cover the hole afterwards. 

Then she returns to the ocean to her feeding grounds, which are shallow, coastal waters with lush seagrass beds. 

After about three months, the turtles hatch and dig their way out of the sand. Instinct kicks in and they immediately crawl towards the ocean. They have to cross the beach, which can be hazardous to them. They face hungry shorebirds, crabs, small marine mammals and possibly humans who interrupt their journey to the sea. The ones that make it head towards deeper, safer water. (And isn't the hatchling super cute? This was Munchkin's favourite one!)

The young sea turtle will spend several years feeding on plankton, jellyfish and fish eggs. Sea turtles are immune to the stinging of man-o-war jellyfish and will quickly learn that they make tasty meals. About 10 years later, the sea turtle grows up to a foot long and is ready to join the adults. At this point in their life, they enjoy eating seagrass in meadows and have become pretty herbivorous. They will migrate with the other adults and eventually make it to the spawning grounds.

This sea turtle was all grown up and had traveled thousands of miles around the world. She returned to the same beach she hatched at to lay eggs of her own. How amazing is that? Sea turtles are pretty remarkable creatures.

Green Sea Turtles are on the endangered species. Their nesting grounds are in danger of building developments and other creatures that eat the eggs. Pollution in the water harms them, as well as fishing nets, like the one in the picture above. Despite this activities focus on the animals life cycle, I also wanted to teach them about what effects these creatures in the wild. For instance, apart from humans, tiger sharks specifically hunt sea turtles (below) in Hawaiian waters. Bean was also amazed that sea turtles can live as long as humans. However, only about 1% of hatchlings reach maturity. 

At this point, I had presented the kids with a basket of other marine creatures.

There was another sea turtle so Bean added it to the others and said this was a family looking for food. A diver was added by Munchkin who had him swimming around, but he passed by the turtles and decided to check out the coral reef the kids had put together.

Some activities that we did to add to this life cycle - We lined up the turtles in order (eggs, hatchling, juvenile, adult), compared the features of all the turtles, talked about their habitat and what they eat, and talked about why they are endangered.

Somehow this sea turtle managed to grow larger than this humpback whale! That's amazing! And wildly inaccurate! :) I showed the kids many pictures of sea turtles online and we even watched a few short videos on YouTube. They were able to see how big a sea turtle was compared to a humpback whale. At birth a sea turtle could have fit in the palm of their hand, but by the time they had lived several decades, they could have been almost a half-a-foot taller than Bean! I had her stand against a wall and I drew a line at 31 inches, her height, and 44 inches. She could then compare her height to the two other lengths (we got the measurements from Wikipedia). One length was shorter and the other longer than her height. Sea turtles can weight between 150-420 lbs. We haven't gone over weights too much yet, so this was a hard concept for them. I picked Munchkin up and said that he was MUCH lighter than a sea turtle and Bean laughed and said, "No, he's heavy!"

"Hello, Ray!"

Bean had to make the hatchling a comfortable and safe bed of sand. The irony is that the safe bed is actually an upside-down cutting board. Eek!

Bean enjoyed playing with the Green Sea Turtles and meeting their friends and enemies, in the case of the tiger shark. Munchkin enjoyed rearranging the coral reef about a dozen times and taking the diver on adventures. :)

Stay tuned for our next life cycle activity!

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Exploring Life at the Arctic Circle

For this small world we were focusing on life in the arctic circle. We used a glass pan filled with pretend snow and created a small "fishing" hole at the center of their home. We made the pretend snow out of frozen baking soda that we have also used in other activities like Arctic Small World, Frozen Dinosaur Excavation Sensory Bin, Frozen Fizzy Cubes and Frozen In Ice. It is made by mixing baking soda with a small amount of water and put in the freezer for a few hours to freeze over (add water depending on your preferences). You can also use this snow without freezing it and it will still have a snow-like texture, but we like how cold and solid it is. After hours of playing with it, it will still be as cold as ice. It will not be moldable at first, but gradually as it is played with more, it will be. 

To learn about life in the arctic circle Bean and I watched a short documentary on our tablet and she was fascinated by these holes in the ice that can form miles away from the edge of the ice. Sometimes whales will be trapped and need to use these holes to pop up for a breather. In that instance, they usually have to remain there until the ice melts and they are able to swim back to open ocean. She kept asking why the whales were stuck there and I told her about how ocean mammals can't breathe underwater and need to come up for air. 

Her favourite part of the documentary was when a polar bear found the fishing hole. She was amazed when the polar bear jumped into the small hole to try and catch a beluga whale. The beluga whale was bigger than the polar bear, but the polar bear was able to wait on the ice until the beluga whale was too tired to fight back (which is super sad, but that's nature and we need to respect that). 

Bean created a natural community. She told me that the Eskimo lived in the igloo with the mushers and their dog, a husky she named Fang (after White Fang). The walrus and seal were best friends and the arctic fox followed the polar bear around a lot. The rabbits were brother and sister and she named them after herself and Munchkin. The wolf was always on the move looking for the caribou who kept disappearing (into Munchkin's pocket). 

Whenever the whales had to hide from the polar bear, Bean would submerge them in the water. She would count to ten and then let them up again for air. She would hold her breath and then breath out in a huge gust to make it sound like the whales were breathing through their blow holes.

We talked about camouflage and how it helps animals blend into their natural surroundings. I asked Bean to find all the animals that she felt blended in with the arctic tundra snow. 

She really likes learning about the food chain ever since we read a book on food energy, which is why I try to incorporate some type of food chain into each small world we create. Caribou migrate to where the food is and their natural predators, wolves, follow them. It's possible for one wolf to take down a caribou, but typically wolves work as a pack to bring them down. She also had the fox hunting the rabbits (none were caught, they were too fast), polar bear caught the beluga whale (for the high-calorie fat), and the Eskimo was out hunting for whale and caribou too. 

These mushers finally made it home after traveling through a blizzard! Living in the arctic is completely different than living in New England. We looked at a few pictures of weather examples and compared them. This past winter we had a few huge snow storms that filled our street with several feet of snow. The arctic tundra has just as much snow and some animals burrow in the snow and some have to dig through the snow to find food underneath. Bean really liked the little lemmings who live in the arctic snow, although we did not have any figures for her to play with. Summers in the arctic are really beautiful and completely unlike what we experience here. I would take an arctic summer over our heat waves any day. 

We compared several of the animals, but these two were the most similar. Dogs are descendants of wolves, although some dogs do not look anything like wolves. Our dog is a Shiba Inu and she looks more like a fox than a wolf. We also looked up a few videos to listen to the sounds the animals made and Bean's favourite was an arctic wolf howl (and everyone was amused when Kaede went crazy trying to look for the source of the howling). She also really likes listening to the song of the orca, so we had to play that one several times.

At one point, a big gust of wind blew a few of the animals into the ocean and the mushers had to jump in to save them.

This little guy came over from the south pole for a visit. Munchkin had him sliding around on the ice and swimming through the ocean.

These mushers had so much fun racing around the fishing hole!

Everyone had so much fun playing at the arctic circle! Bean learned a lot about the animals who live there and about the weather in the tundra. Munchkin simply enjoyed playing with the animals and the mushers and the snow. 

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The Life Cycle of a Frog

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The Frog Life Cycle is a great learning activity that every kid loves (or should, because frogs are awesome!). My kids especially love frogs, and it might be hereditary, because I was also obsessed with frogs as a kid. There was a frog pond behind the house I grew up in that was home to hundreds of frogs! It was really fantastic to be able to go outside and watch them grow up. They were your typical freshwater pond frogs and they were so noisy and cute! We had bull frogs, green frogs, northern leopard frogs, and pickerel frogs. There were several small ponds that were all connected to a stream that connected to a bigger river that came from the lake at the top of the mountain I lived on. As far as habitats go, it was a pretty amazing one.

The sad part is that we don't live that close to nature anymore and so to do activities like this, I can't show my kids the real thing. Instead, we use manipulatives from Safari Ltd., read books on the subject and watch YouTube videos (such as this one: The Life Cycle of a Frog).

Amphibians are fantastic creatures that go through an amazing metamorphosis during their life cycle.

1 - Eggs - Some frogs can lay hundreds to thousands of eggs! The eggs are coated in a jelly-like substance that protects them. Not all the eggs survive, some are not fertilized, some dry out in the sun and others are eaten by animals, birds and fish. The eggs that survive will begin to hatch 7-9 days later.

2 - Tadpoles - These little tadpoles are so cute, but they are not quite frogs yet. For the first week, they will stay fairly close to their eggs and eat the remaining yolk in their guts. If you look closly, you will notice gills and a wiggly tail. After the first week, they will begin swimming around and eat algae.

3 - Tadpole without gills - After about four weeks skin will begin growing over their gills which are replaced by lungs and they will also grow teeth! At this point, they begin being very social and swim in schools like fish.

4 - Tadpole with legs (froglet) - By 6-9 weeks they are growing longer and their legs start to grow. By 9 weeks they will look mostly like a frog, but with a very long tail. They can now begin eating fish.

5 - Adult frog - From 9-12 weeks they will lose their long tail and grow a tongue. They now look like small frogs and can leave the water. By 16 weeks these frogs are now adults.

We set up our frog habitat in one of our sensory bins (a large shallow circular platter). You can add water or water beads, but we kept it dry at first while we explored the different life stages. Afterwards I did add a small amount of water so that the tadpoles could swim around and the kids could do some pretend play. I added a rocky area around the small pond so that they had some land to play on and a small plant so the eggs had something to latch onto, as well as a few foam lily pads for the bigger frogs.

I asked Bean if she could recreate the life cycle and put them in order from eggs to frog. She had seen enough pictures of the frog life cycle that she put them in a circle.

Munchkin watched and occasionally picked up the eggs or the little tadpole.

This little guy was very popular with Bean because he had such an expressive face!

Bean also enjoyed rearranging the habitat. She moved the plant several times and each time made sure to reattach the frog eggs to the rock base because that's where they were safest. She moved a few of the bigger rocks to make a small nest for them as well.

To describe the texture of the eggs, I let the kids play with some water beads. You could also use clear/coloured or regular black tapioca (boba) pearls if you would prefer an edible alternative (which we normally would, but today we wanted to try out water beads). They looked really great in this habitat! Since they were blueish-green in colour they doubled as water. The texture was squishy (and bouncy!), but they weren't as slippery as real eggs. They also lacked a small embryo inside, which Bean noticed right away and told me that they weren't really frog eggs. The she said, "maybe they can be empty eggs?" The tadpoles and mama frog had a lot of fun swimming around in them!

Bean is also curious about Toads, so we discussed how they were different. Frogs lay their eggs in clumps, while toads lay their eggs in lines. We did a simple activity using the water beads to see how that would look. Bean took a handful of water beads and put them on the table. We used a piece of yarn tied into a circle to keep them from rolling away. Beside them she took another handful of water beads and diligently lined them up along the edge of the table. She then jumped up and down exclaiming, "I did it! I lined up Toad eggs!" We then had to scramble around and collect all the water beads that bounced off the table. Hence the lack of a photo. :)

Munchkin was so in awe of these water beads! He did not want to put them away and kept bouncing them around in the frog pond (and on the floor).

A few of the water beads split open. They actually looked similar to frog eggs after the tadpoles have hatched!

Munchkin used the foam lily pads to pick up the water beads and move them around. This turned out to be a fun fine motor activity for him!

He also enjoyed filling the jar back up! (And that's what a whole packet of water beads looks like! I had no idea it was going to make that much!)

This little guy was completely thrilled to play with these water beads and I suppose we will have to play with them some more until we pick up more tapioca pearls. The main problem I have with water beads is that they are not edible and I worry about someone accidentally trying to eat one... Which did not happen, because I specifically told them that they were not food. However, since our dog was nearby, I made sure she did not try to eat any of them. I tossed her a rock and that kept her busy while the kids played.

Frog Pond Mazes

The first maze included just the Mama Frog and her Eggs. Mama Frog had just enjoyed a nice meal and Bean had to hop her all the way home to her Eggs to check on them. Bean managed this easily and told Mama Frog that she was such a good mama!

In the second maze, we tried something a little different. We included all of the pieces from the life cycle set and to pass through the maze Bean had to pick up the next piece and move forward from there. So for instance, the eggs drifted and wiggled around until they reached the tadpole and stopped. The tadpole swam forward slowly and met up with the tadpole with gills. That tadpole swam forward a bit faster and reached the froglet. The froglet swam very fast to the frog and then became an adult! Bean hopped the adult frog around and was very proud of herself for successfully completing the Frog Life Cycle.

She wanted to do this maze several times and sometimes attempted it backwards!

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You might also enjoy our edible Frog Eggs post where we used tapioca pearls for the eggs and Jell-O for the pond.

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Please always supervise your children when they are playing with sensory materials.