At Home With The Gopher Tortoise- Activity and Read Aloud

The Gopher Tortoise is a Florida Keystone Species! Believe it or not, more than 350 different kinds of animals may share a gopher tortoise’s burrow. Most, such as lizards and toads, slip in on occasion for some of the same reasons the tortoise does. Spiders and snakes go in to find food. And some, such as the gopher cricket, live nowhere else on Earth!

The gopher tortoise doesn’t seem to mind any of these creatures sharing his home. They just get out of the way as the tortoise comes and goes. When a gopher tortoise leaves a burrow for good, animals such as foxes or burrowing owls may even take it over for raising young!

Read: At Home With The Gopher Tortoise (read aloud in video)

Activity 1: Transformation Tunnel

Use a kids crawling tunnel or make a tunnel with chairs and sheets. This is your Transformation Tunnel! Print out these Gopher Tortoise House Guests and cut them apart. I laminated mine because we play this often! Place these in a bowl or paper bag. One child pulls a card and moves it to a separate bag or bowl to take the card out of play. The child crawls through the tunnel and emerges on the other side TRANSFORMED!! The child should move and act like the animal while all other players guess the animal. The first person to get it right gets to go next! As a bonus, Hang up this great picture from Ranger Rick. Have children find the creature on the hole and make guess about what the animal eats, if it is a predator or prey, and whether it is a permanent resident or if it just uses the hole sometimes.