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Using notebooking pages in nature study
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.
More nature study ideas
Comments
19 responses to “Using notebooking pages in nature study”
how sweet. I love turtles 😉
Me too, they’re one of my favorite animals to find.
How exciting to find a turtle in your yard! I wish we’d have one stroll along and visit us! 🙂
I was wondering how he’d ever find his way out because we kept finding him in there for several days in a row (probably didn’t help we were feeding him).
wow, how cool, bet the kids are so excited at that little visitor!
beyond words 🙂
Thanks for featuring our boats. Love your turtle! I saw one crossing the highway the other day and considered stopping. Luckily I thought twice! lol
I actually did stop once to help a turtle, was one of the scariest moments of my life 🙂
I have been looking for a turtle lately. I think the boys would love it.
I’m betting they would, my kids certainly loved it.
Isn’t he a tortoise, not a turtle? How cool to have him available for a nature study!
That was actually one of the big discussions here, we ended up with he’s a turtle because we weren’t finding any tortoises that fit his description.
Your notebooking pages look great. I’m a member too but I’ve never made our own pages. I never read instructions if I can help it, so thanks for the inspiration, and the tip about saving time by reading the instructions! And thanks for hosting 🙂
Forgot to say – thanks for featuring our air pressure experiments, too!
I really need to play around more with the ability to make your own because there are so many things, and I never quite got my page to look “pretty.” It was functional, but not as pretty as it could be.
He’s terribly cute, and my kids would love him – but I couldn’t view the pictures of him in your kitchen without hearing my mother’s voice in my head – “A turtle means salmonella. Wash your hands!”
Doug and I spotted baby bunnies nesting next to/under the public library. Hoping they’ll make an appearance for the kids today. I can just imagine what my mother will have to say about that 🙂
You inspired us to do some research. We couldn’t really tell from the pictures, but he looks like a type of mud turtle to us. We did find a neat turtle identification site https://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?guide=Turtles that you might want to check out.
That might be the same turtle identifier Jeff was using, it certainly looks similar.
When we went by the nature center and the lady there looked at our pictures, she said it was a 3 toed box turtle, from our research it was an eastern box turtle.
Oh, and Jeff was also standing there mumbling about salmonella.
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