Preschool Life Cycle of the Turtle Discovery Bin

Need a great activity to study preschool life cycle with your students? Use this activity as a great inspiration!

You can easily change up this hands on learning tray for other animals to introduce your preschoolers to the life cycles of different animals.

One of the best ways to let preschoolers learn is to touch, see, and manipulate with their hands.

Ever since I became a preschool teacher at a bilingual school in Costa Rica, I have immersed myself further into the Reggio Emilia inspired teaching approach.

I came up with this idea with a few simple manipulatives to focus on preschool life cycles:

• Free printable puzzle like this one here: https://highenergymommy.com/frogs-and-turtles-preschool-theme/ – make sure to laminate it for longevity with little hands!
• Wooden tray with sides
• Kinetic sand – like this from Amazon here
• Plastic Turtle and other ocean/sea props like these from Amazon
• Wooden letters to spell “turtle”
• Seashells or other pieces related to the ocean

Another great idea that I did not have the materials to add at the time of this learning bin, would be to add something to represent the eggs of the turtles. The preschool students could hide the eggs in the sand which would lead to a really great discussion about how turtles nest and lay their eggs!

What I loved most about setting this up in my class, was to observe how the students played with the turtles, spelled the letters, and felt the kinetic sand in their hands.

When I took this away for a new theme, they all kept asking – “where is the turtle?”

If you try this activity in your preschool classroom, please share in the comments how you observed your students learning and interacting with this life cycle learning bin!

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