Arctic Animals

Arctic animals are my favorite, and it was the perfect time of year to learn about them and wrap up our huge animal theme! Antarctica was a big part of the Social Studies core when I taught Kindergarten, so I still love teaching about it. It was hard to do it all in just 2 days!

Dramatic Play was my favorite this week. We went to Antarctica, the South Pole, on Monday and learned how to be scientists. I had a lot of fun playing with the kids and showing them what scientists in Antarctica do. We used lots of cool words like "observe" and "discover" and we ventured outside and observed the animals of Antarctica. The kids would take their maps and notebooks and were writing things down like crazy. I have some of the best pictures I'll share with all you parents later. They were having great discussions about the different animals they were discovering in the South Pole.

For large group on Monday, we read about penguins and learned that Daddy Emperor penguins carry their eggs on their feet, and that they can break or freeze if they fall. We practiced being daddy penguins by balancing bean bags on our feet and trying to walk. It was a great exercise of patience and problem solving! Some kids just gave up and picked them up, while others held them on by bending over and holding it there. Some never made it very far with their tiny steps. It was fun to watch them figure it out. They even asked to try it again Wednesday during self-select time, so I got the bean bags back out. Both days, we wore penguin masks and marched around singing Penguins on Parade and taking turns leading and following.

Wednesday we switched Dramatic Play to the North Pole and got to be scientists again! They really enjoyed seeing new animals at the North Pole. It's confusing for kids because books and movies often show penguins and polar bears together since they both live in the snow. I was surprised how quickly they caught on that penguins live to the south, bottom of the world, and polar bears live in the north, or top of the world.

That knowledge helped us out in small group as we sorted our toy animals on our world map. They did an awesome job! I barely had to help, they remembered it all from their playing.

I think the kids' favorite part of the week was our magic snow. It started out as a tiny amount of powder, then when I added water, it grew and filled our tubs! It was such a fun science experiment! We got to play with all different Arctic animals from the North and South pole in the snow. They loved it! You can get it here and see a video on it. I also saw it in small packages on the toy aisle at Dollar Tree. They loved finding out it's the same stuff in diapers that makes diapers hold moisture and grow too!