Yellow-Footed Tortoise

The skin and scales of the yellow-footed tortoise are black, brown and yellow. This tortoise is found in South America. These tortoises are widely used around the world for trade. They make sounds like a baby cooing and they each have their own special body language. This tortoise will eat grasses, fallen fruit, plants, snails and worms.

We did some online research together and I cut/pasted some information into a Word Doc.  Then I double spaced it and had him use a highlighter to mark his keywords.  We quickly made a simple outline with those words.  The outline prompted him to fill in the details himself rather than just copying the information from online word-for-word.  I acted as his scribe (to help with the "young boy's don't like writing issues) and then typed it up for him (editing nothing).  He is very happy with the end product and I'm excited to see his growth.

Once again I'm using a curriculum that people think you can't use until children are much older and we are enjoying great success with it.  You just have to adapt it to meet your needs and be willing to find the essence rather than implementing it "by the letter".

Yeah!  Happy day in our homeschool. 

Pickles is organizing a book about South American plants and animals this week so we'll get to practice our skills some more this week.