Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: Preparing For Our Reptile/Amphibian Open House & Beginning Playground Project

We spent this week finishing up preparations for our open house on Friday! In art class on Monday we painted our clay reptiles & amphibians. The kids did a great job using their pictures to create accurate clay representations of their animals.

Here are some of the clay animals: top left; leopard gecko, top right; green iguana, bottom left; poison dart frog, bottom right; leatherback sea turtle.

Since we had finished painting our habitats last week all we had to do this week was to add the details to them. Each group also decided what they wanted to make for their presentation projects to share their learning with other classes. Below are some pictures of the amphibian group adding their details to their habitat. They created a rainforest for their animals with tissue paper sides on the box for moss and vines. They also added trees made out of toilet paper rolls and tissue paper. They chose to make a book with the pages shaped like a frog for their presentation project.

Below are pictures of the lizard group adding details to their habitat. They created two habitats because half of the lizards we learned about live in the forest and the other half live in the desert. The forest group added tissue paper moss and vines to the sides as well as trees. The desert group added rocks, sand and a cactus to their habitat. The lizard group chose to make a flip book for their presentation project.

Below are pictures of the turtle group adding details to their habitat. They created a habitat that included the ocean, swamp and rocky desert areas to incorporate all of their turtles. They added trees and water plants to the swamp area, as well as sand and rocks to the desert area. The turtle group chose to create a song for their presentation project. Here are the words to the song sung to the tune of "The More We Get Together":

The Turtle Song

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

Scarlett

Galapagos tortoise, tortoise, tortoise

Lives on the islands of Galapagos

It is a herbivore and eats lots of plants

It’s predators are rats, dogs, pigs and people too

It can live to be 100 and 50 years old

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

Ashley

Sulcata tortoise, tortoise, tortoise

It lives in the desert of Africa

They are herbivores and eat plants and grass

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

Shelby

The Yellow-Bellied Slider, Slider, Slider

They are omnivores and eat plants and meat

Freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and rivers and rivers

are where they like to live in the United States

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

Lexi & Lucas

The leatherback and green sea turtle, turtle

They live in the oceans all over the world

They like to eat seagrass and jellyfish too

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

Sebastian

The Alligator Snapping Turtle, Turtle

They are carnivores and they like to eat meat

Rivers and lakes in the United States

are where they live, they live, they live

Humans are their only predator

*Chorus*

We learned about turtles, turtles, turtles

We learned about turtles, they are reptiles

For some reason I didn't get any pictures of the crocodilian group but they created a swamp for their habitat. They added trees and water plants for their details and they created a book of poems for their presentation project. Their book of poems included list, -ing, acrostic and concrete poems.

Towards the end of the week this week we also received 5 caterpillars that we will be watching over the course of the next few weeks. We will get to observe them as they eat their food in the jars, form a chrysalis, and then turn into a beautiful butterfly. The students are excited to watch how the butterflies change throughout the butterfly life cycle!

We updated our bulletin boards to show what we have learned throughout our reptile & amphibian study as well! On the top left we have our project wall which shows what we already knew about reptiles/amphibians, what we wanted to learn about them, vocabulary words we have learned, the groups the students signed up for and a poster from each group.

The rest of the board included pictures of the animal each student focused on as well as a label with their name and where they live. On our map we added numbers where certain animals live. We also added our key to allow people to find where those animals live and what number represents them on the map.

We began a playground project about mapping and deciding what they want to add to our playground with money that our school has raised. We will continue to work on this project over the new few weeks until we decide what we want to add to our playground. They might choose something that we can make or they might choose something that we buy but we are trying to expand and improve our Here We Grow natural playground space. When we started our discussion on what they might want to have in our playground space some of the things they came up with were; swimming pool, trampoline, rock climbing wall, arcade, tire swing, football field, tree house and many more. We looked at some ideas that I found on Pinterest and these were some of their favorites.