We've been pet-sitting 2 Red-Eared Sliders (Tumble and Mumble) for the past 2 weeks. Watching them has taught us many things, including this concept - I hate changing the water! I think we will either get a tank with all the filters so that the water stays clean all the time, or else no aquatic animals until the children can do EVERYTHING themselves.
Anyway, the question was asked today, "How come the water in the tank looks less than it did a few days ago? Are the turtles getting bigger?" "That's because of evaporation", I said. "What's evaporation?" I was busy with the computer, so it took me a few minutes to hear the lesson in the making. Given my constant cry that we don't do exciting stuff in our homeschool, I tore myself away and hurriedly set up....A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT! You can tell I'm excited. Preparation isn't one of my strong points. Any setup that requires more than a minute doesn't get done. I ran to the stove, put a pot of water on to boil, and started to talk about evaporation. As we watched the water disappear from the pot, I put ice in a cup and talked about condensation. Put the cup of ice over the pot on the stove and showed condensation almost immediately (I know, I am a genius). It was exciting to hear Simonne speculate that the water in turtle tank was evaporating slowly because the air isn't as hot as the stove. 15 minutes of science, I love it!
By the way, watching the turtles taught us many things:
- The bottom of the turtle shell is black and yellow.
- They wipe their faces and each others faces
- They sleep with their legs both in and out of their shells
- They love to climb onto each other and will stay like that for hours!
- They have no teeth
- We wash our hands after handling them
- They close their eyes by bringing the bottom lids up
- They stretch their necks and legs
- If the turtle falls and lands on it's back (as they have done many times), it can flip itself back over with ease.
- They make a sound like air escaping when they are not happy
- They have claws
- They look like they yawn
just to name a few.
