Scaly & Cold Blooded...REPTILES!

One of my best talents is to pretend I really like something to get the kids really excited.  I admit it...I LIE TO CHILDREN!!  Now, I don't go and tell them that I've held snakes (I've barely touched one) or swam with crocs (my insides shutter at the thought).  We live in an area that houses lots of reptiles.  Snakes, lizards and tortoise to be exact.  Some of the children even have a few of those reptiles as pets!  EWW!!  I had a turtle growing up for about 2 minutes.  That thing stunk something awful.  I'll stick to my dog (although she stinks something awful most of the time, too.)  :)

Here are some fun things we did to learn about the "super, cool" reptiles:

Textile Lizards: A hodge podge of items were glued to a beautifully colored lizard.  We had looked at different lizard photos to see designs on their backs.  A fun book we read was "Lizards for Lunch" .

Mosaic Turtle/Tortoise (I let them choose which one they were making...after we had discussed the difference, of course.)  We painted a paper plate brown then glued (with lots and lots and lots of gooey glue) beans on the backs. 

Musically Chompy Alligators.  I found this idea here, but instead of painting the beer caps I turned them upside down. Now they look a bit more like teeth.  And, no worries...they weren't sharp. :)

Our Sensory Bin was HUGE hit!  I originally had just the rocks and gravel with the turtles but it made so much noise!  I then added the water and wow...what a difference!  Although it was pain to clean with the gravel, it was well worth it!

Alligator Number Match: I've had these cute clips for about 7 years and couldn't figure out what I'd do with them until I saw this idea and made one of my own!  I decided to put produce stickers on each section so the gator could be a good example and eat his veggies!  (Each section has the corresponding number to match the clip)

We had a fantastic week!  :)