Turtles

This week in home school land, we are talking about Dr. Suess and reading lots and lots of Suess books as last Friday was his birthday and I like to be all themey like that. Today we read Yertle the Turtle. If you are not in the know, this is a story about a turtle king named Yertle, who gets a little big for his turtle britches and decides he would like to see more of the world than his little stone throne allows. So he orders is turtle subjects to stack themselves and he climbs on top of the stack to enjoy the view. This is all well and good until a little turtle on the bottom named Mack decides to complain. This gets him nowhere so he BURPS (I kid you not, that is what the book says, and I cannot tell you how happy Emma was to read that word) and the whole stack tumbles. Yertle lands in the mud and Mack gets to be king and "all the turtles are free as all creatures should be." We enjoyed the book together and then made our own stackable turtles out of paper plates and construction paper heads and feet all stapled together cute like. Pure joy working on them together and taking turns with each little job. My favorite part of the whole process was when the girls decided that all the turtles needed names. These include such creative beauties as Wee-Woo (not to be confused with Woo-Wee), Universal, American, Swirls and Stripes and Zig-Zag. But my all time favorites have to be Darth Vader, C3PO, and R2D2 because as Emma says "ya gotta have a little Star Wars in there." True indeed.


Abi stacking turtles.


Emma stacking turtles.


Our stack of 20 turtles. After this great accomplishment, we yelled "burp" and knocked them down, laughed a lot, and then did it all again. Such fun.


Our little family of turtles. I want to show a close up of each, but you will have to settle for the group.


This cute little guy is named Darth Vader. :)