The eastern box turtle has a high-domed, rounded, hard upper shell, the carapace. Orange and yellow markings on the dark brown shell distinguish it from other box turtles, and also the four toes on its hind feet. Its coloring camouflages it among leaves and debris on the floor of moist forests.
The underside of the shell, the plastron, is dark brown and hinged. All box turtles have a bilobed plastron, allowing them to close their shell. Its shell is unique because it can regenerate. In one report, the carapace of a badly burned box turtle completely regenerated.
Box turtles have a hooked upper jaw, and usually a significant overbite. Feet are slightly webbed. Males are larger with shorter, thicker tails than females. Males have short, thick, curved hind claws, while females’ hind claws are long, straight and thin.
Eastern box turtles walk
with their heads upright. They can
travel about 50 -55 yards in one day. A homing instinct helps this turtle find
its way home. They typically grow to 4 inches by 6 inches. The largest box turtle is the Gulf Coast
box turtle found along the northern region of the Gulf of Mexico.
The subspecies Terrapene c.
carolina, commonly referred to as the eastern box turtle, is found along the
eastern United States from Maine to Florida, and west to the Great Lakes region
and Texas.
Eastern box turtles are
predominantly terrestrial and live in a variety of vegetative areas. They are
often found near streams or ponds, or areas of heavy rainfall.
Box turtles are omnivores.
Younger box turtles grow rapidly and tend to be preferentially carnivorous. Therefore,
they spend more time in the water where it is easier to hunt. After five to six years, they move onto
the land and shift to a more herbivorous diet. At the Smithsonian’s National
Zoo, eastern box turtles eat salad, earthworms, pellets and occasionally
mealworms.
These turtles usually have
a home range with a diameter of 750 feet or less in which they normally stay.
Home ranges of different individuals overlap frequently regardless of age or
sex. Aggression between
individuals is not common, competing males will spar each other. This involves
biting at each other’s shells.
Box turtles reach sexual maturity
around the age of 5. Mating season generally starts in the spring and continues
through fall. After a rainfall, males become especially active in their search
for a female. Males may mate with more than one female or the same female
several times. Females can store sperm for up to four years and do not mate
every year. In fact, a female could lay fertile eggs up to four years after a
successful mating!
Nesting season is May to June.
Females usually lay four or five eggs. The female uses her hind legs to dig a
nest in sandy soil. She then covers the eggs, which incubate and hatch on their
own. Box turtles exhibit temperature dependent sex determination; eggs incubated
at 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit are more likely to be males, and those incubated
above 82 degrees Fahrenheit are more likely to be females.
Eastern box turtles adjust their
activity in order to maintain their optimal body temperature. In the summer,
they are most active early in the morning or after it rains. When it gets too
hot, they find cool areas to rest, such as under logs, leaf piles, mud or
abandoned mammal burrows. During
the spring and fall, they are active throughout the day and enjoy lying in the
sun to get warm.
Eastern box turtles that live in
southern regions remain active throughout the winter. In northern regions where
it is too cold, they find a place where they can be insulated, a hibernaculum,
and become lethargic, entering a hibernation-like state called brumation. This
starts in October or November and ends in April when they emerge again.
Box turtles usually live for 25-35 years but have been known to survive to over 100 years old!
The eastern box turtle has a high-domed, rounded, hard upper shell, the carapace. Orange and yellow markings on the dark brown shell distinguish it from other box turtles, and also the four toes on its hind feet. Its coloring camouflages it among leaves and debris on the floor of moist forests.
The underside of the shell, the plastron, is dark brown and hinged. All box turtles have a bilobed plastron, allowing them to close their shell. Its shell is unique because it can regenerate. In one report, the carapace of a badly burned box turtle completely regenerated.
Box turtles have a hooked upper jaw, and usually a significant overbite. Feet are slightly webbed. Males are larger with shorter, thicker tails than females. Males have short, thick, curved hind claws, while females’ hind claws are long, straight and thin.
Eastern box turtles walk
with their heads upright. They can
travel about 50 -55 yards in one day. A homing instinct helps this turtle find
its way home. They typically grow to 4 inches by 6 inches. The largest box turtle is the Gulf Coast
box turtle found along the northern region of the Gulf of Mexico.
The subspecies Terrapene c.
carolina, commonly referred to as the eastern box turtle, is found along the
eastern United States from Maine to Florida, and west to the Great Lakes region
and Texas.
Eastern box turtles are
predominantly terrestrial and live in a variety of vegetative areas. They are
often found near streams or ponds, or areas of heavy rainfall.
Box turtles are omnivores.
Younger box turtles grow rapidly and tend to be preferentially carnivorous. Therefore,
they spend more time in the water where it is easier to hunt. After five to six years, they move onto
the land and shift to a more herbivorous diet. At the Smithsonian’s National
Zoo, eastern box turtles eat salad, earthworms, pellets and occasionally
mealworms.
These turtles usually have
a home range with a diameter of 750 feet or less in which they normally stay.
Home ranges of different individuals overlap frequently regardless of age or
sex. Aggression between
individuals is not common, competing males will spar each other. This involves
biting at each other’s shells.
Box turtles reach sexual maturity
around the age of 5. Mating season generally starts in the spring and continues
through fall. After a rainfall, males become especially active in their search
for a female. Males may mate with more than one female or the same female
several times. Females can store sperm for up to four years and do not mate
every year. In fact, a female could lay fertile eggs up to four years after a
successful mating!
Nesting season is May to June.
Females usually lay four or five eggs. The female uses her hind legs to dig a
nest in sandy soil. She then covers the eggs, which incubate and hatch on their
own. Box turtles exhibit temperature dependent sex determination; eggs incubated
at 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit are more likely to be males, and those incubated
above 82 degrees Fahrenheit are more likely to be females.
Eastern box turtles adjust their
activity in order to maintain their optimal body temperature. In the summer,
they are most active early in the morning or after it rains. When it gets too
hot, they find cool areas to rest, such as under logs, leaf piles, mud or
abandoned mammal burrows. During
the spring and fall, they are active throughout the day and enjoy lying in the
sun to get warm.
Eastern box turtles that live in
southern regions remain active throughout the winter. In northern regions where
it is too cold, they find a place where they can be insulated, a hibernaculum,
and become lethargic, entering a hibernation-like state called brumation. This
starts in October or November and ends in April when they emerge again.
Box turtles usually live for 25-35 years but have been known to survive to over 100 years old!
Many early Americans believed that
popcorn popped because a tiny angry spirit who lived inside the kernel wanted
to escape. Today we know that the extra-strong hull on a popcorn kernel seals
in water that forms in the moist, pulpy center.
When the kernel is heated, the water
boils and turns to steam and expands. The pressure builds high enough for the
kernel to explode, and the fluffy endosperm fuses and fills with air.
Explore popcorn:
Experiment to determine how moisture
content affects the kernels’ popping ability (dry kernels, freeze, and soak
some.)
Compare two brands of popcorn. Start
with 100 kernels of each. Record and chart the number of kernels that popped,
number that didn’t pop, volume, and flake size.
Have students write fictional
stories detailing how popcorn’s ability to pop might have originally been
discovered.
Predict and then find out whether
corn seeds or popped corn weigh more.
Grow corn in your school garden. Compare
the corn that students grow. Have students make predictions about the growing
process in gardening journals.
So many children today grow up in a world of neglect, violence, and despair. Most of America’s youth are at risk. More than half of America’s high school seniors have witnessed violent crimes at school and between three and six children are killed by abuse daily. Our educators are struggling today with little support and few tools to effectively equip students for the climate of trauma and fear.
We have experienced a burst in the scientific study of emotional learning and the functioning of the brain and have a more accurate insight into the processes of learning, feeling, and thinking.
Self-Science is a valuable, effective approach to building a vital set of skills and understandings. The value of Self-Science has been proven in practice and in research. In his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goldman calls this program “a model for the teaching of emotional intelligence” as one of the two curricula he recommends.
Self-Science is designed to build emotional intelligence and to develop a learning community that fosters respect, responsibility, and resiliency.
Fundamental skills the program teaches:
Recognize, understand, communicate, and manage feelings.
Recognize and redirect patterns of behavior.
Set goals and move toward them.
Increase respectful communication, thinking, and behaviors.
Results from Implementing the Emotional Intelligence curriculum are:
Higher motivation
More creativity
Higher academic achievement
Greater safety and inclusion and less violence
More accountability
Better relationships
Improved social skills
Increased lifelong success
For teachers, improved EQ skills increase “on task” behaviors and reduce discipline problems
We have not learned how to make quality of life, joy, purpose, and connection a part of our daily lives. Our society is faced with overwhelming problems of poverty, violence, racism, and selfishness.
Children need to be equipped with tools to grow strong despite the negativity that surrounds them. They need strategies to manage themselves and to reshape their society.
Schools cannot replace family, church, or other cultural systems that historically have shaped the integrity and morality of children. Given our current situation schools need to help reinforce the principles that we all share as a society.
The U.S. is the only country on the entire planet that does not have either a religious context for instruction or a values program as a framework/foundation. It is essential that schools support the learning of parental and community values and the universal principles of our society.
The Self-Science curriculum is based on some very simple assumptions:
The more conscious one is of experiencing, the greater the potential for self-knowledge. The more self-knowledge one gains, the more likely it is that one can respond positively to one’s self and others.
These assumptions are based upon a careful and critical study of respected research in the area of affective education. Eclectic in origin, Self-Science draws principally from 30 years of practice along with research on learning and development; Seligman’s studies of optimism; Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; Kelly’s psychology of personal constructs; child personality and development studies; Neuro-Lingusitic Programming; and scientific methods of inquiry.
Emotions are not in the way of learning, but they are the route to learning. Emotions are not peripheral, but they are central to being human. Perhaps most satisfying for educators, emotional skills are learnable.The following is an great website to learn a lot more.
Six Seconds is a research and practice organization that supports educators who wish to make SEL(social-emotional Learning) part of their school environment. We do this by:
The young child is a creative child with the ability to appreciate and participate in the creative arts.Through the arts children develop the ability to observe, express, and draw conclusions across disciplines and embrace a lifelong love and appreciation for the arts. The creative arts are a basic human need.
The arts have stood alone for a very long time as subjects isolated into packets of instruction. The arts should be integrated into most areas of the curriculum to produce a well-rounded creative person. It is important to encourage creative expression and nurture the creative talents of children.
Music is a form of storytelling. It is a natural active thing and part of the soul of humanity. Music comes from the heart of life. Singing exercises the lungs, increases breath control, aids speech development and sound and volume control, and increases vocabulary. Teach a second language through song! Music is mathematical. It’s stories. Tune in to the rhythm of our heart! Make music a part of every day.
Explore rhythm with young children with simple claps. Then add clap/patch (clap thighs) and then clap/patch/snap(snap fingers.) A drum is important in the classroom. The drumbeat sets the rhythm to the music and the children follow. Children like to take turns doing this. Be creative. There are many things you can do with a simple drum
Musical instruments can be bought or made. My first rhythm sticks I made of bamboo. I recommend about eight inch, but you can make them thin or fat, long or short.
Shakers can be from gourds you plant to seashells tied together, or salt boxes with beans or rice or pebbles inside for different sounds. I stay away from plastic anything. Explore and create. You might create shakers filled with different things for children to identify or match sounds together.
Octave bells are used to develop ear training and pitch. I use them to see if they can tell me which is high or low or they can put them in order of pitch and we can also make simple music with them.
Sound games are fun for children. I had a musical bingo game of different instruments sounds and a recording of animal sounds. Children need to develop their sense of hearing. Vocal sound games strengthen the vocal anatomy (animal sounds, laughter, sirens.)
Create a sound machine. Each child chooses a sound and their movements then they gather to each other to make a moving machine. It’s fun. One of my classes did this as entry into the theater where they were performing. It was great!
Control of the breath comes from singing and through breathing exercises. Singing enhances vocal ability and strengthens the lungs. It is important to chose music and exercises that strengthen the vocal anatomy (tongue, lips, throat muscles.)
Visual arts – to draw is to look, to look is to see, to see is to have vision, to have vision is to understand, to understand is to know, to know is to become, and to become is to live.
Nature will inspire children’s drawings. Let them create from natural materials and not pom-poms and artificial junk. There are so many fun natural materials to use and most will cost you nothing.
Not only do children need experiences of visual creation, they need to be exposed to fine art. Take them to the art gallery or an art show or invite artists to your class.
It’s important for young children to simply explore the line – straight lines, spirals, and curves. Experiment with dark and light, black and white.
Children need to explore the basic elements of the visual arts: line, shape, color, space, form, texture, and value.
When it comes to color sorting, you can make color gradient boxes using paint strips from the paint store. Large watercolor blocks are easy for children to use painting and always safe.
Have a weaving wall inside or outside the classroom. There are many areas of the visual arts: sculpture, jewelry making, carving (I remember carving a bird from a piece of soap), painting, collage, drawing, coloring, printing, stamping, dying, sewing, weaving, paper making, pottery, photography, and graphic design to name a few. Explore the visual arts with students. Learn by playing!
Enjoy creative experiences, talk about art, create art and go on art adventures. Help children develop an awareness of art in books and in every day life. Create a classroom gallery.
Theatre – Children are natural actors. Allow children to act out in circle time, explore expression and tone with their voices, play theatre games, and pantomime.
Children must be given the opportunity to speak and be heard. Listen and respond to children. Let them tell a story or recite a poem they know. Very young children usually start out doing little finger plays when they are young. Children are still trying to master language so it is good to let them talk and even take turns telling a story, maybe even create a puppet show!
For the very young child reading to them at home is one of the best language learning exercises I know and also stimulates the imagination.
Be imaginative in exploring gestures, posture, movements and body language, vocal tone and variations, facial expressions, and the way we walk.
There are many theatre games for older children like changing hats, building a character, fact or fiction, famous people, invisible shapes, news broadcast, etc. A class of eight and nine year olds in Charleston presented a play in French for Piccolo Spoleto one year. The school also had a summer arts program that included performances
Movement is required for a young child to develop balance, coordination, strength and even rhythm. Perception and motor development go hand in hand. A dancer’s body channels and radiates the music through balanced precise movement! Have children do movement to their songs. Practice yoga exercises 15 minutes a day. Leave time for outside play. Some playgrounds are designed to enhance their perceptual and motor development and encourage exploration. Others are filled with metal bars and swings that become basketball courts and football fields.
Outdoor in nature is where children like and need to be. Ask yourself if what you are doing is something you can do outside and start going outside more. You may find it harder at first because children get so excited about going outside, but with a little time they will calm down and develop more self-control. You will find that things will begin to flow and soon go much better outside and inside the classroom.
Another great fun exercise is dancing. You can introduce culture and language through dance and it is so much fun!
Writing and Language Arts – The very young child focuses on the sounds and rhythm of language to learn speech and then read and write. They can learn to rhyme words very early and enjoy making silly rhymes.
When the child is able to write, keeping a journal is a useful tool. The diary is a type of personal journal. Students can keep a journal of dreams, experiments, thoughts, progress of a plant growing or a journal of their poetry and stories.
Some students like to experiment with ways of writing. Once a child learns to write, they may play and explore writing in different ways such as printing, cursive, writing in a mirror image, writing in code, or invisible writing. They may explore different tools to write with such as pencils, pen and ink, bamboo pens, feather pens, etc. Give them the materials, explain their use, and let them explore and create!
Geologists classify it as an “igneous intrusion. Native Americans regard the tower as sacred ground. Today, the 1,267-foot formation stands as the centerpiece of Devils Tower National Monument.
NATURAL BRIDGE
Carved by a creek, Natural Bridge in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is one of the most famous natural sites. Standing 215 feet high, with a span of 90 feet, the formation is open to the public. Natural Bridge makes this list because its early supporters were extremely persistent in promoting Natural Bridge, once hailed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
STONE MOUNTAIN
Confederate States of America icons Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, along with their horses, are chiseled into the face of Stone Mountain, located just east of Atlanta, Georgia. Work on the carving began in 1916, but was abandoned in 1925. The sculptor who unexpectedly walked away from the Stone Mountain Carving, Gutzon Borglon, didn’t stay out of sight long — he began work on his signature achievement, Mount Rushmore, two years later. The Stone Mountain Carving was abandoned for nearly 40 years before resuming from 1963 until its completion in 1972. The carving, which is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, is 400 feet above the ground and measures 90 wide by 190 feet tall. In case you’re wondering, the heads of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore measure about 60 feet tall.
THE WAVE
The Wave is a rock formation located on the Arizona/Utah border. Erosion through millions of years created the swirls and ridges in the sandstone that give the area such an otherworldly appearance. Of all the rocks on this list, this is the most difficult to visit, requiring a tough 6-mile round trip hike. Access to the Wave is limited to 20 visitors per day, and applications must be made months in advance.
DELICATE ARCH
At the Arches National Park in Utah, the Delicate Arch stands out above the rest. The 52-foot-high sandstone formation is the state symbol of Utah. It is a strenuous 3-mile round-trip hike.
PLYMOUTH ROCK
Plymouth Rock remains an important part of American heritage. The rock is a popular attraction in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
MOUNT RUSHMORE
Mount Rushmore was carved out of a granite mountainside in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The sculpture is of the faces of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Construction ceased in 1941 after 14 years when funding ran out.
Music is a form of storytelling. It is a natural active thing and part of the soul of humanity. Music comes from the heart of life. Singing exercises the lungs, increases breath control, aids speech development and sound and volume control, and increases vocabulary. Teach a second language through song! Music is mathematical. It’s stories. Tune in to the rhythm of our heart! Make music a part of every day.
