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Tommy the Turtle takes a Tumble

A children's book by Yvonne Koslowsky

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Makes a Great Gift

"Tommy the Turtle takes a Tumble" makes a great gift for your children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews.

The book is ideal for preschool children up to those 8 years of age. Check it out for your loved ones who are in nursery school through grade 2.

"Tommy the Turtle takes a Tumble," written by Yvonne Koslowsky, illustrated by Kevin Scott Collier, for Lifevest Publishing, is an illustrated story about a turtle named Tommy who is amused by the antics of other animals on his first day of gym class. Koslowsky is a first-time author and was inspired to produce the book after her youngest daughter's recent trip to save the turtles in Costa Rica.

"Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out."

- James Bryant Conant, Harvard President

Parents: Please note that April 22nd marks the anniversary of Earth Day, the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
In the United States that year, Americans experienced the advent of fiber optics, an area of industry where my husband spent most of his career, the Apollo 13 space mission, and the release of the Beatles' last album.
Gaylord Nelson is the founder of Earth Day and he was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Please visit my husband's web site, SCIENCECOLOGY, for more contemporary issues on being an advocate for the earth.
Koslowsky on the Environment

"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures..."

- Albert Einstein

Messages to Reinforce

Protection of Sea Turtles

Gym Class is Fun

Encourage your child to participate in PE and other sporting activities.

Individual activities, such as floor mat exercises, lifting weights or playing on the monkey bars, or team activites, like jump rope or basketball, are all great ways to get plenty of calorie-burning exercise.

Share your positive experiences about "Phys Ed" or "PE" class as a youngster. Recount those fun times in the gym where you climbed ropes and bars and played team sports like basketball.

Explain the many other activities you did as a child from track and field events to biking, swimming to tennis, from dodge ball to football, from baseball to soccer, and from hockey to lacrosse.

Encourage Your Child to Read

Developing fluency in the early years involves a number of skills. The child must practice identifying letter names, making sounds associated with letters, blending letter sounds into words, reading a string of words (text), spelling words, and writing sentences.

Practice is key. These skills are honed as the child reads words that are both recognized by sight and remembered from recent letter-sound associations. At the same time, new words must be introduced to expand the child's vocabulary. Teachers do this in the classroom by reading new material. Parents must also participate in expanding their child's vocabulary by reading a wide array of new material. Exposure enhances learning.

Research has shown that 21 minutes of independent reading each day makes the diffference between a child scoring in the 90th percentile versus the 2nd percentile. With a solid experience in the early grades of reading to others and reading independently, a student by the fourth grade will have independently read a half million words.

Learning to read is the most important skill a child in his or her early years will master. With that in mind, enjoy "Tommy the Turtle Takes a Tumble." Remember to encourage your child to:
- listen to words and to the sounds inside of words
- talk about the story
- understand the sounds that make up the words
- manipulate the sounds and relate them to letters and words
- connect the words with events (going to gym class), actions (swinging), things (floor mats), and ideas, and
- relate events of the story to personal experiences.

The Phases of Reading

Phase	Progress	Ages
1	Prepare to Read	4 - 5
2	Read Together	5 - 7
3	Independently Read	6 - 8

The first phase prepares them to read, usually during the ages of 4 to 5. During the nursery and kindergarten school ages, the child has a limited vocabulary but does possess a basic set of sight words. These early reading years require lots of stories to be read aloud to children.

The second phase is the one where reading together is encouraged, typically from ages 5 to 7. During the early grade school years, books should be read with more words per story, as the child learns to form other words by changing the intial sound (e.g. jump to bump) or by rhyming with a known world (e.g. bars to cars).

During this second phase, the child begins to read independently and this should be encouraged. This shift from reading together to reading independently usually occurs between the ages of 6 to 8 and marks the third phase of producing a lifelong reader. Books during this stage feature even more words per story and prepare the budding reader to enter the world of chapter books.

When children begin to read, they know about books, pictures, and words. They understand that letters form words and words make sentences that tell a story. Early readers memorize words. They need to grow as readers by learning to sound out words, building basic vocabulary of sight words, and using context clues in pictures and words for meaning. Young readers start to comprehend what they are reading.

A Reading Exercise

Links are provided here periodically to excellent short stories for you to read to your child.

Then, after reading the story, either ask your child the accompanying questions for their answers or have them show you their understanding by writing their answers down on the provided worksheet.

Reading and Comprehension Activity
Enjoy!

In the summer of 2007, my daughter Ashley volunteered to protect sea turtle eggs in Costa Rica. This work was done to protect this endangered species from human poachers and the sea turtle's natural predators, which now outnumber this struggling species.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated."
-Mahatma Gandhi

Turtles Lay Eggs

Sea turtles lay a number of eggs in a nest that is about elbow deep and then cover them up for protection from predators.

Most species of turtles then leave the eggs in the nest and head out to sea.

Turtles, especially sea turtles, move slow on sand. This sea turtle is entering the ocean.

Sea turtles are more at home in the ocean. This one is now under water!

Vultures swoop in looking for any turtle eggs that may be exposed. In many places, like Costa Rica, volunteers shoosh away the birds and any human poachers to protect the eggs until the baby turtles arrive and head out to sea!

Who is this at the beach by the turtle egg nests?

Hey, it is Ashley the volunteer, shooing off the birds and protecting the eggs. Yeah!

'Turtle' translated into other languages

Hawaiian = honu
German = schildkrote
French = tortue
Spanish = tortuga
Italian = tartaruga
Dutch = de schildpad
Norwegian = skilpadde

A Hawaiian "honu."

Global Warming and Sea Turtles

Rising sea waters, due to global warming, may lead to a loss of nesting areas on beaches.

Since sea turtles bury their eggs on sandy beaches, the rising water will wash away the beaches, leaving fewer places to nest. Rising temperatures will affect the eggs too. Warmer sand means fewer male hatchlings to sustain the turtle population. If the sand gets too warm, no eggs will hatch at all.

Please do what you can do reduce the causes of global warming - every little bit helps.