This past week we’ve had a regular visitor to our backyard. Meet Tank the turtle. I found him when our dog was barking at something and scratching at it. I went over and found this guy all closed up and determined to wait out Mac. He became fodder for our science lessons as we rescued him from the dog and then observed him as a nature study.
I don’t know who would have won, but Mac was certainly trying his best to dig through that shell.
Future Ticia 2022, I’m updating this with my new logo, and generally adding some more information.
Making observations
We spent the week observing this little guy, seeing how he moved, what he was doing, and what he ate. The kids were over the moon about it.
I really enjoyed it too because I love turtles.
How to use notebooking pages for a nature study
At the end of the week (and I didn’t prepare as well as I could have), I made a notebooking page using NotebookingPages.com {affiliate link}. It’s my new toy I got last week. I’m still learning how to use it.
I decided to jump in and not watch the tutorial, which was my own stupid error and caused me to waste a lot of time. I sat there fiddling around with my pictures and what I wanted them to write about. Finally, I ended up using one of their templates, and applying that to what I wanted (they’ve got this awesome nature study template to use, highly recommend it).
Then I sat the kids down to write about what they observed.
Here are the big things they observed:
- He has a short tail that can go inside his shell
- He eats carrots and grass
- He must eat bugs too because his poop is long and rounded. (This is courtesy a nature class the boys went to and learned about animal scat, Future Ticia 2022 bets they don’t remember this, but I sure do because they told me all about it, multiple times)
- He can hide in his shell to protect him.
- He hides well.
- He has black poop.
Are they simple observations? Yes, is it the big things they thought important? Yes, they thought what he ate was fascinating.
Since the kids are getting older I’m starting to include more notebooking for them to do, so don’t be too surprised if you see more posts including NotebookingPages.com {affiliate link}.
Future Ticia 2022, I ended up not using Notebooking Pages as much as I thought I would. I mainly started using loads and loads of composition notebooks that we glued all sorts of things into. This also means I have a zillion old composition notebooks in various states of use.
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