Living Root Garden School • Creatures Great & Small • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the landlord's front door — a sandy mound with a half-moon hole, and a slow animal with a shell nearby. Whose home is it, and who else moves in?
Look for the front door: a sandy mound with a half-moon hole in front of it is a gopher tortoise burrow. The tunnels can run longer than a school bus, and hundreds of other animals use them — owls, snakes, frogs, mice, and insects all shelter in gopher tortoise burrows. That makes the tortoise a keystone species, and its burrows are protected in Florida.
Remember the shell rule: a turtle's shell is its ribs and spine, grown into armor. A turtle cannot leave its shell any more than you can leave your skeleton. The top is called the carapace and the bottom is the plastron.
Meet the box turtle: it lives on land in woods and yards and has a hinged shell that closes up tight, front and back, like a box with a lid. When scared, it pulls everything in and shuts the box.
Rule out the lookalikes: a small green turtle with a red patch behind each eye is a red-eared slider — a pet-store turtle that people released into ponds, where it outcompetes native turtles. Never release a pet into the wild, and never take a wild turtle home. Wash your hands after any turtle contact, and leave every burrow and nest alone.
Ask: A sandy mound with a half-moon hole sits in the scrub — who lives inside, and who else uses the front door? Write your guess before you look closer.
Try: Survey for turtle signs without disturbing anyone: a sandy burrow mound, a turtle basking in the sun, a box turtle crossing the yard. Log each sign from a distance, and never block a burrow or poke anything into it.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Write a one-page “landlord” profile of the gopher tortoise: who uses its burrows, what each tenant gets from the deal, and what happens to the whole neighborhood if the landlord disappears?
Tell: Fill in the log below — every sign you found, and who you think made it — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The burrow is a home for ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw the gopher tortoise's burrow as an apartment building — who else lives there?
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone why a turtle can never take its shell off — in your own words, no reading off the packet.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can spot a gopher tortoise burrow.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Survey log + landlord profile
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can spot a gopher tortoise burrow.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.