January 23, 2018
A New Spot for Adventures!
Today we discovered the Tortuga! Lucas and Jillian spied dozens of turtles from this vantage point. We were also visited by a crane. (Lucas screamed “Baby bird is cold!” because the crane folded his long neck up like Becky hiding in a blanket.)
Here in the middle of a long walkway over a gentle pond, sits a pretty octagonal wooden pavilion with two benches. Kimberly and Jaquline have been naming the locations where we do schoolwork and wait for Christina and Rebeccah to come out of class.
Kimberly: “It looks like a turtle.”
Jaquline: “No, The Dead Marshings, because the water is black.”
Kimberly: “But it’s so fun. This place should have a fun name.”
Jillian: “There’s bunches of turtles here!”
Kimberly: “What’s the name of the turtle in Wild Kratts?” (A favorite TV show about animal-loving brothers who turn into cartoons to save animals.)
Jillian: “Tortuga!” She jumps around. “Let’s call this place the Tortuga! It looks just like it and we can see turtles.”
I tell them that Tortuga is Turtle in Spanish.
Kimberly: “Perfect! It’s shaped like a turtle and we can see turtles from it!”
Jaquline: “So this is our Tortuga, the turtle ship to see turtles from.” (Jaquline decided the benches on the outer ring overlooking the water would be the Outer Rim since they “needed a Star Wars spot.”)
Three more turtles rose to the surface.
Lucas spied them, ran to the edge, and introduced himself to them.
Jaquline and Jillian peeked between the floor planks to watch turtles swim underneath them as they created their sentences for Language.
Lucas announced the arrival of every turtle, bird, crane, and bug.
Kimberly took a break from arithmetic periodically to point out new sunning turtles on the edge of the pond.
So now they have the Stone Table, the Black Forest Table, the West Wing, (all of these are picnic tables), the Black Spots (we are reading Treasure Island right now and the black metal tables are round – so they are the Black Spots), the Tortuga, and the Outer Rim. I wonder what other imaginary places the girls will find hidden on the college campus!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart