Elephants and Turtles

A couple of weeks ago Madison's class was assigned to create a habitat for the animal of their choice. First she chose a baby chick whose habitat is actually man-made and not really what the teacher was looking for. Then it was a coyote and and then she saw elephants spraying each other on TV and so she chose elephants and I said "Okay that's it! No more choices!"

So we set to work. Mrs. O asked that no one bring their habitats in until the due date to preserve creativity and originality which I thought was great! She really encourages independence which is exactly what Madison thrives on. I gave Madison choices on what we could do having never done something like this before but other than that she did the whole thing herself! (Except the hot glue!) I set out all the craft stuff I have and she attacked the pipe cleaners making a tree. I showed her how to create the illusion of water and grass. Luckily we didn't have to make the animals if we didn't want to which was good because we went to Cocoa Beach for the long weekend and our time was slipping away! I think it turned out great!







On Saturday the girls and I had a great day. We went and had a picnic at the park, enjoyed the library and then I took them swimsuit shopping! Both of their old ones were super saggy and just seemed to be growing right along with them! They were thrilled, to say the least, and they even got to try them on in the fitting rooms which was a big deal. So we came home with their treasured suits and then of course they were dying to try them out so off to the pool we went when we spied a turtle in the middle of the road!

It is a strange thing to see a turtle tucked up in its shell in the middle of the street. It brings a strange urge in me to pick it up and kick it at enemies to get coins. It's also very scary because they can get run over and it does happen particularly on busy roads. Cars in our neighbourhood swerve around them or people put them back on track towards a pond but am I picking one up? NO.

So we went home to get Scott and then we thought we should take it home and get some pictures of it with the girls.



Scott brought it through the house (I can't imagine what the poor turtle was thinking) and he set it on the patio and then we sat still being very quiet waiting for the turtle to come out of its shell. I'm sure it was thinking "Fat chance!" because it wouldn't come out. So we let the girls investigate for a minute.





Our animal loving Celina should have been in her element but perhaps the real thing was just too big. Here she is saying "I love turtles," though she is not convinced!



Then we set him on the banks of our big pond where he poked his head out. Once he realized where he was, he was gone! Whoever said that turtles are slow never met this one. I'm sure it was shaking its head since the whole expereince was probably the equivalent to an alien abduction!