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Stanley the tortoise visit

Reception Night and Day Topic- Hibernation

Visit from Stanley the Tortoise Wednesday 9^th November 2022

To support our learning of showing empathy, caring and observing the changes of our seasons we have had a very special visitor into Reception and Nursery this week, Stanley the tortoise. He is preparing for hibernation and we thought about all the things we would need to do to help him be happy, safe and comfortable. We washed our hands before meeting Stanley and talked about how to keep our germs safe from him but coughing and sneezing into a tissue.

We developed our fine motor skills by ripping lots of pieces of newspaper up for Stanley to use to keep him warm. We took turns to meet him using our school value of self-control and made sure we adjusted our behaviour to be considerate of his needs. Each child had the opportunity to gently stroke Stanley's shell making observations about what the felt, most children agreed he felt bumpy and cold.

Using our language and communication skills we thought of questions we would like to know about Stanley such as "Why is he covered in scales?", "Why is he moving so slowly?" and "has he got bones?" We further discussed what reptiles are and why they move slowly when it's cold outside. We moved our bodies to mimic Stanley in the summer when it's hot and in the winter when it's cold. To show Stanley in hibernation we froze like icicles and fell asleep.

To further explore the question about bones, we had previously learnt about last half term, we looked at real tortoise xrays on our class light box. We were fascinated to see on the xray that the tortoise had eggs which must have meant the tortoise in the xray was a female. The children identified the white areas on the xray were the bones.

Stanley stayed in class and we quietly observed him. We developed or writing skills by writing about our experience today, drawing a picture of Stanley and making collage tortoises for our class display wall. Some children then even made good night cards for Stanley for when he goes into hibernation. Finally, we learnt how to bath Stanley so he was clean and fresh for his long sleep until spring. We sang him the months of the year song so he knows how long to stay asleep for!

(click on the image to view a larger version)

• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit
• Stanley the tortoise visit

 

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