Last week, I woke up to a dreadful discovery: my Keurig machine was not working. After several desperate attempts to fix it, it became clear that a new machine must be purchased. Stat. And so we carted away the old machine and said hello to a shiny, red, and most importantly, operable model to fuel my daily caffeine needs. I briefly considered getting a regular coffee maker, but ultimately opted for the convenience and ease of a Keurig. Therefore, my giant pack of coffee filters is still ready for crafting projects.
In keeping with our ocean animals unit study, we decided to make sea turtles next. (You can find instructions to make coffee filter jellyfish here and coffee filter sea horses here.) Sea turtles were a favorite to study around here – we probably spent over two weeks examining the lives and habits of these cute sea creatures. We borrowed lots of sea turtle books from the library – my favorite was Turtle Summer: A Journal for My Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe. It tells a real-life story of a mom and her daughter helping sea turtle babies get to the ocean safely with beautiful drawings and photographs of sea turtles and other ocean life. There are fun and thought-provoking activities included at the end of the book. Of course, we also love the drawings and easy-to-understand text of Gail Gibbons’ books, and her Sea Turtles is no exception. For our online resources, I found this link to a free sea turtles unit study and used some of its printables, like the Sea Turtle Anatomy Matchbook. The kids enjoyed tracking sea turtles on SEATURTLE.ORG. Sea World’s website also had a lot of information on sea turtles for the kids to practice looking up. Netflix and Hulu and YouTube are all great resources for sea turtle videos – this one was my kids’ favorite:
All right, let’s make some super cute sea turtles!
Here’s what you will need: lima beans, washable markers, styrofoam bowls, chalk pastels, craft glue, paper, and of course, coffee filters.
First, flip the bowl upside down and glue lima beans all over the top and around the rim of the bowl. Let dry completely before going to the next step.
Next, get out those markers and color all over those lima beans! (Painting them would work too, but we needed a break from painting around here.)
Now, take two coffee filters and fold each of them in half. Color them with your chalk pastels however you like. To keep the chalk dust from rubbing off your sea turtle project, spray the filters with a fine mist of aerosol hairspray.
Then, cut each of your folded coffee filters in half and glue them to the underside of the turtle’s body (the bowl) as shown. Cut out a triangle shape and a turtle head shape from your paper and glue on in the appropriate spots.
Use the markers to decorate the turtle head and tail. Your colorful sea turtle can sit (swim, I mean!) nicely on a shelf, or you can use thumb tacks to hang it on the wall.
Did you know that leatherback sea turtles can weigh up to 2,000 pounds? That’s like half my minivan! Thankfully these coffee filter sea turtles are a lot lighter (and a lot cuter than the leatherback, in my opinion!)
dandelion bouquets 