Arctic Unit Week 1

This was meant to be our first January unit, but lack of routine and school was getting to us so we went ahead and started a week early.

First we looked for the Arctic Circle on our globe and talked about the different countries that make up the Arctic land.  I pointed out the Arctic Ocean.  (We haven't really talked about the names of the oceans yet.  Does anyone have a good song for that?)

I printed out a few Arctic Animal Bingo and by printing the bingo ball cards twice we could play memory as well.

Although I don't like Nickelodeon characters, I was pleased with the Diego Arctic animal cards

because they gave concise information about each animal.

I printed them out and paired the information card with my own Arctic animal nomenclature cards.

I much prefer having real photographs of the animals.

We have been reading lots of books about the Arctic and about polar bears.  We are focusing mostly on polar bears.  With the Arctic Toob {affiliate}, Bear put together a polar bear habitat. I showed her some Google images of the Canadian Arctic and she chose one for me to print for the background.  She used white organza fabric I had and some white Duplo for the snow and ice.  Her animals barely show up in the photo.

We talked about camouflage and why animals in the Arctic tend to be white. I painted some popsicle sticks (I had 5 different colors) and we talked about which ones stood out more on the white paper.  Then we did a hunt in the yard to see what color sticks were better camouflaged against our yellow lawn.

 

We experienced how blubber keeps a polar bear warm.  (We also did this experiment last year.)

 I used butter and not lard in the ziploc bag and since our hands never came in contact with the butter, I can use it for baking.

  I printed out an early reader from Enchanted Learning called How Many Arctic Animals.  This counting booklet was too easy for her in terms of math but she enjoyed writing her numbers.
I also found an early reader to print at Making Learning Fun.  She loves to read it to me.

We read Arctic Community by Bobbie Kalman and I Is for Inuksuk {affiliate} and then built our own inuksuks after a nature walk to find rocks.  I glued the sculptures with hot glue so they couldn't be accidentally knocked down, but they are still fragile.  We displayed them where J-jo can't reach.

(I made the one on the left.)

Stay tuned for more Arctic Science experiments next week and the list of Arctic books we read will be posted Saturday.

Arctic Unit Week 2
Books for Arctic Unit

Linked to Preschool Corner.