Turtles

I hosted story hour at the coffee shop today and we read three books about turtles.

Turtle Day by Douglas Florian is a simple, but fun book about turtle's day from sunup to sundown.

Turtle Splash, Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell features ten turtles on a peaceful day at the pond.  One by one they dive into the water.

Scoot by Cathryn Falwell features six silent turtles sitting still as stones while the pond life moves about around them.  Will the turtles ever move?

All three of these books are fun to read.  The Falwell books both have great information about turtles and pond life at the end of the books.


The children decorated their own turtle shells (paper plates) with markers, crayons, glitter glue, and stickers.

 Last year, C and R made these turtles:




They are a little too complicated to make during a coffee shop story hour, but they are fun to make at home.  For directions, click here.

To see more book projects, check out stArt at A Mommy's Adventures.

Turtle Splash by Cathryn Falwell

The Reading Theme Challenge at Bookworm's Book Nook this week featured Turtle Splash! Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell.

Turtle Splash! Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell is a wonderful counting book about a day in the life of ten Eastern Painted Turtles. One by one the turtles jump into the water after being startled by various animals. At the end of the story, the turtles settle down for the night making this a great bedtime story.

The author also includes two pages of information about pond life and a page of directions for making leaf prints!

There are so many things to love about this book. The countdown is fun; C and R enjoyed counting the turtles on each page. Also, there are clues on each page as to which animal will create the next disturbance. We had fun finding the clues and guessing how the animal would disturb the turtles. The artwork is beautiful and very realistic. This book is a perfect mix of science, art, literature, and mathematics.

After reading this book, we made our own turtles. This idea came from the book Alphabet Art by Judy Press.

1. Cut away the ridged rim of a paper plate,

2. Make a single cut from the outside edge of the plate into the center,

3. Paint the plate to look like a turtle shell,

4. Once the plate is dry, overlap the edges and staple to form a peak in the center,

5. Cut out the turtle's head, tail, and legs (we used green foam sheets because I have so many sheets of it left over from Christmas decorations, but you can use construction paper or cardboard),

6. Staple the head, tail, and legs to the shell, and

7. Add eyes and a mouth.

C's turtles
R's turtlesAren't they adorable?

Turtle race: Place the turtles on a hard, flat surface. Stand or sit behind your turtle and blow under the turtle's shell to make it move. The first turtle to cross the finish line wins the race!