Well- i'm not want to give bad reviews, but I would say this particular tortoise home to learn…read moreabout turtles is definitely for older children versus younger.
As a mother, and a teacher for TK/kindergartners, and with a 80 year-old Owner I believe the gentleman running this tortoise ranch needs a bit of an update. He is very much a man of the times which is fine because he reminds me of my old grandpa who was short into the point but somewhat blunt. His wife also repeated everything he said and reiterated it numerous times and would get more annoyed at my five-year- old classroom children as they, like most children do, would forget things. They both seem to get rather irritated with the younger group of children. I felt bad for the children getting reprimanded, and I did have to raise my own voice to ask the wife to talk to the children in a nicer tone, and I felt bad for the children as well since they forget things right after they said.
That being said, the older fifth graders that went on this tortoise tour rather enjoyed it, but they found a few vocabulary words funny, and later asked us, " what's a drug sniffing dog?" And " how can sex change an animal?" which were both statements spoken to both (younger-TK & Kinders AND older 3rd-5th graders) Group of children. Ughhhhh
Since we're in Silicon Valley, verbally speaking to children for 20 minutes about concepts of tortoises or any animal without a visual aid is very cumbersome. My TK and kindergarten children cannot sit still for a five minute digital book let alone sit still for 20 minutes and three of them started to fall asleep as they sat crisscross, applesauce, and nodded their heads off. One of my five-year-olds could not sit still, and he got up a couple of times and the owner reprimanded him and raised his voice saying, "hey you take a seat! " it was rather alarming to my five year-old classroom child so I had to whisper and talk to him off to the side so he didn't start crying.
The tortoise feeding is very interesting and they have strict protocols!! The owners are very aware that most parents do not watch their children, but as a educator/teacher, we are constantly supervising our children, so the ratio was 1 to 14, and we would only allow about eight children in the tortoise area with four teachers watching.
We rotated through our children since we had a rather large group, but it seemed to bother the owners because not all the children were in the pin at the same time. It seemed a bit chaotic but then again we also had a group of about 35 children in a rather small space.
Overall, I do not think we will ever come back to this particular tortoise ranch, but they were rather interesting, and I really do worry about the cleanliness of everything since the tortoises walk, eat and poop, and pee all in the same vicinities of where we were walking. We made sure all the children wiped off their feet at the park nearby, and some of them stepped in tortoise number two, so they were rather disgusted, and their shoes stunk.
On a happier note, I'm glad some of the children got to see tortoises granted at least five of my children were terrified of the animals and their hard shells. Lol then again they are four and five years old and everything is new to them. We would've been better off going to the library.Hee
