I have some sea turtle lesson plans and sea turtle lapbook today. Grab more ideas on my Homeschool Lapbooks – Powerful Tools For Mastery Learning page. Also grab more ideas on my Best Homeschool Unit Studies page.
We made a detour on finishing up high school for a quick nature read about sea turtles.
I chose Our Sea Turtles as a spine and we weren’t disappointed.
Today, in sharing from egg to sea turtle nature unit study and lapbook, I’ve rounded up some awesome links and ideas for you.
Also, I created a fun lapbook for about upper elementary to middle school for your kids.
Of course, you can decide what ages to use the lapbook for because I never make my lapbooks baby-ish.
Using cursive font and avoiding baby-ish or goofy looking clip art the best I can, I create my lapbooks for all ages.
Sea Turtle Unit Study & Lapbook
First, let me show you how much we loved the book Our Sea Turtles.
It is a 282 page reference book with beautiful color pictures on each page.
It has several sections, including:
- The Species, Sea Turtle Form and Function,
- Life Cycle and History, Ecology,
- Our Sea Turtles on Land,
- Sea Turtles in Water and
- Saving our Sea Turtles.
One thing we learned right away that we did not know was that not all turtles in salty waters are sea turtles.
They are truly marine animals and one of the things that makes them different is their shell.
Moreover, sea turtles don’t really have the ability to pull in their head and limbs inside although they can still withdraw their neck.
Although we know that sea turtles are mostly herbivores, we did learn that they won’t pass up some easily captured prey.
From Egg to Sea Turtle Nature Unit
Additioally, we learned about some of the predators of the sea turtle.
The Northern raccoon, ghost crab, fire ants, laughing sea gull, bobcat, fish crow, dolphinfish, crevalle jack, tiger shark and bull shark are a few of the sea turtle predators.
What was really interesting was learning what was inside an egg. Sea turtles have an amniotic egg.
The features of a sea turtle egg include a papery eggshell that protects but is porous (to air and water vapor), and an allantois (fetal membrane) which facilitates respiration and helps with waste.
The yolk sac supplies nutrients for the embryo and it shrinks as the turtle grows.
What we didn’t know was that the amniotic sac is like the equivalent to the placenta in mammals.
Sea Turtle Lesson Plans, Guides, and Background Information.
Along with reading the book Our Sea Turtles I really loved a lot of these resources. Too, look at some sea turtle lesson plans.
- Journey of Survival educators guide I found super helpful and used a lot of the information from here to do the lapbook. You can read it online.
- 22 page pdf educator’s guide has a great roundup of vocabulary words.
- Grab this fun coloring page with crossword puzzle activity.
- You love this Sea Turtle Inc. site for great hands-on ideas like make a sea turtle habitat, make a magnet sea turtle for older kids (cool), and a template to create your own hatchling for younger kids. So cute.
Then here are more free plans to use with the book Sea Turtle Science which is also good to add to your sea turtle lesson plans.
- 9 page elementary school guide has some great question and answers or facts about sea turtles.
- A super nice 180 page educator’s guide with printable lab cards and hands-on ideas. Nice!
- Grab these free and beautiful sea turtle posters in pdf.
- Use these free maps to add in some geography to your unit study as you learn about tracking the sea turtles.
- Grenada Fun website has a wonderful graphic for teaching the parts of a sea turtle along with background information. It’s the one I used for making the minibook in my lapbook.
- Here is an ultimate sea turtle guide.
- Look at this fun prek sea turtle unit study over at Homeschool Preschool.
Sea Turtle EASY Hands-on Ideas and Activities
- There is a fun and easy build a geometric turtle activity that is in the Sea Turtle, a Journey of Survival guide I shared above.
- Build an origami turtle.
- More hands-on idea for the littles over at Munchkins and Beans to learn about sea turtle life cycles.
- Make this clay sea turtle over at Buggy and Buddy.
- I love this tin foil turtle for some art.
- Nice coloring pages and make great covers for your lapbook although I have created some for you too.
In addition, look at some of these books.
10 Sea Turtle Resources
Add some books about sea turtles and hands-on resources to your lesson or unit study to bring it to life.
Sea turtles are fascinating. Hatched from eggs smaller than a baseball, some can grow to weigh over a thousand pounds. Once adults, they can live to be around 100 years old. And when it's time to nest, they migrate more than 1,000 miles. With colorful, clear illustrations and straightforward text, Gail Gibbons introduces the eight kinds of sea turtles living in the ocean today. Learn the similarities and differences with labeled diagrams and experience the hatching of the tiny turtle babies with detailed illustrations. This updated edition now includes the most up-to-date information about these beloved reptiles, as reviewed by an expert vetter in the field of herpetology.
Celebrating the love between mother and child comes an achingly beautiful story that has captured hearts around the world. Written by a new mom, by accident, when she sang a little song to her fussing newborn, I'll Follow the Moon proudly donates proceeds to charity: every book saves a turtle.
Follow Rothman’s inquisitive mind and perceptive eye along shorelines, across the open ocean, and below the waves for an artistic exploration of the watery universe. Through her drawings, discover how the world’s oceans formed, why the sea is salty, and the forces behind oceanic phenomena such as rogue waves. Colorful anatomical profiles of sea creatures from crustacean to cetacean, surveys of seafaring vessels and lighthouses, and the impact of plastic and warming water temperatures are just part of this compendium of curiosities that will entertain and educate readers of all ages.
Who could resist celebrating sea turtles? They may seem like lazy ocean reptiles drifting with the oceans’ currents, but they are actually long-distance swimmers that spend their entire lives searching for food and a mate. What’s more, they come with their own built-in GPS, returning to the exact beach where they were born to lay their own eggs. Kids will learn all about these tranquil and mysterious animals through brilliant photography and illustrations, plus the trusted and distinctive content you love from NG Kids!
A book that tells how turtles survive with the help of protection programs.
The book's pithy, well-organized sections are lavishly illustrated. It is a guide for anyone who is the least bit curious about these fascinating marine animals. Bite-sized installments harmonize with multiple images on each page to make this book a unique and entertaining resource. The story it tells covers understanding, experiencing, and saving our sea turtles, with descriptions of how these endangered animals contribute to our happiness and why they deserve a helping hand.
The mother turtle has a vital job to do: dig a nest in which she will lay eggs that will hatch into part of the next generation of leatherbacks. With only one in a thousand of the eggs for this critically endangered species resulting in an adult sea turtle, the odds are stacked against her and her offspring.
Children can see how animals change and grow. Realistic detail showing a different stage in the development of animals.
Uniquely molded textures and richly painted details bring them to life and help inspire creativity for kids.
It is a great way to expand the growth with children through physical science.
A triumphant story of environmental activism, community, and friendship: Acclaimed activist Philippe Cousteau and renowned author Deborah Hopkinson team up to offer a story of the powerful difference young people can make in the world. Meet Viv, who has a new home and a new school by the sea and follow her as she finds her way in a new place and helps bring together a whole community to save the sea turtles of the South Carolina coast.
Describes the life cycle of sea turtles discussing reproduction, birth, and adult life.
Sea Turtle Media
- How Baby Sea Turtles Find their Way Home.
- This is a great graphic for Sea Turtle Facts.
Then also, our unit study reminded us of the co-op we had where my sister brought a turtle shell Native American craft made by one of her Native American friends.
I love when we have a tie in to what we learned before in one of our co-ops.
Then of course a family visit to the ocean is a great field trip.
The Galveston coast near us had these new and beautiful benches that are part art and part bench.
Local schools got to decorate them with facts about the marine life that live in the ocean.
It not only makes for a beautiful enhancement to seawall, but a fun way to learn facts.
I think doing a mosaic like this would make a great art project too.
Next, here is my lapbook.
The minibooks include:
What Makes a Turtle a Sea Turtle?
7 Species of Sea Turtles layered book.
What Are the Sea Turtle Parts?
The Anatomy of a Sea Turtle.
Sea Turtle Tagalongs trifold book.
From Egg to Sea Turtle Life Cycle Circle book.
The Struggle to Survive.
Predators petal book.
If you’re looking to do any spring nature studies, you’ll want to get a few of the NaturExplorers. I love those studies for multiple ages.
How to Get the Free Sea Turtle Lapbook
Now, how to grab the free lapbook. The lapbook is a subscriber freebie.
1) Sign up on my list to get my emails.
2) Download your freebie.
3) Glad to have you following.
Look at these other links:
- Clay Eggs Project from Table Life Blog
- An Online Book Club choice from Hide the Chocolate
- A Mermaid’s Purse: A Surprise Discovery Within from Eva Varga
- Citizen Science – Nest Watch from Eva Varga
- Egg Identification Nature Bingo {Free Printable} from Freshly Planted
You’ll also love these other nature studies:
- Free Arctic Ground Squirrel Lapbook & Unit Study Resources
- Colorful Winter Bird: Northern Cardinal Lapbook & Unit Study
- Easy and Fun Nature Study: Beautiful Birds
