Welcome to our “Prehistoric Sea Creature Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to stunning (and sometimes terrifying) prehistoric sea creatures! For this day, we turned our attention to Archelons – enormous marine turtles! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the awe-inspiring Archelon!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Like sharks and their lesser known prehistoric counterparts, the Megaldon, practically everyone knows about turtles, but they may not know about massive prehistoric turtles, archelons! These sites are great introductions with kid-friendly facts, images, and related content! They’re perfect for providing a brief intro for your little ones (or to gather up some knowledge as well!)!
- Fun Archelon Turtle Facts For Kids by Kidadl
- Archelon Turtle by A-Z Animals
- Archelon Facts for Kids by Kiddle
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- The Gigantic Sea Turtle by Paleontology Plus by Paleontology Plus (3m)
- Archelon – The Biggest Sea turtle that Ever Lived by by Extinct Zoo (8m)
- Scientists Unearth a Prehistoric Car-Sized Marine Turtle by Edge Science (13m)
- Dinosaur Train – A Sea Turtle Tale S2E48. Dinosaur Train is a cartoon series where dinosaurs explore different prehistoric times. This episode features Archelons.
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
Archelons are massive sea turtles, so for our snack of the day, we picked some turtle themed snacks! Here are a few that we picked from:
- Cookies Shaped with a Sea Turtle Cookie Cutter
- Turtle Jello Cups. We created these for our Learn & Play Turtle Day
- Chocolate Turtles – homemade or store bought 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
The first three are books we brought back from our intro day and revisited just the page on Archelons in each book. The last two are kid-friendly books specifically on Archelons.
- Prehistoric Sea Beasts (If Extinct Beasts Came to Life) by Matthew Rake. This is a great book for elementary age children with fun facts and pictures!
- Smithsonian Kids Prehistoric Deep Sea by Marfe Ferguson Delano. This is a great book for elementary age children with fun facts and pictures!
- Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, and More by Darren Naish. There’s quite a great deal of really nice information in this one, but it’s definitely more for older or advanced readers.
Just Archelons:
- The Voyage of Turtle Rex by Kurt Cyrus
- Archelon (Ancient Marine Life) by Kate Moening
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: PREHISTORIC, SEA CREATURE, FOSSIL, ARCHELON, TURTLE
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you could somehow have a live Archelon as a friend, what fun adventures would you have?
- Do you think having a pet turtle or a pet archelon would be harder? Which one would be more fun?
- If you traveled back in time, would you want to meet an Archelon? What types of behaviors or traits would you make sure you observed?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned.
- Archelon Coloring Page by www.education.com
- How To Fold Easy Archelon – Origami Easy Archelon by Origami Tutorial
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
Continuing on our week-long project, we had them fill out their Field Journal and then compare/contrast with some of the modern day animals that may be (or were once thought to be) related to our prehistoric creature. For archelons, these were leatherback sea turtles.
In addition to filling out their Field Journal, there were also some fun building and science kits that we picked from. Technically, these activities are based off turtles not archelons, but they’re as close as we could get 🙂
- Building Kits. These definitely range in skill set and may be difficult for younger children. We ended up picking the first one and the end result was really awesome!
- Ocean Paint & Play. (Note: this also doubles as a craft activity as well – the kids can use paint or markers to add some color!)
- Plus Plus Sea Turtle
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Prehistoric Sea Creatures or Ocean Learning Fun Ideas, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
