Polar Animals, week 1

Welcome to our Polar Animals unit study along with No Doubt Learning, Journey 2 Excellence, Childhood Beckons, and Montessori Tidbits. Make sure you check out their posts every week (this week, that's only No Doubt Learning and I- next three weeks, everyone!)

We're doing it a little differently this time; instead of this being a kindergarten-only study, we're including all of our various-aged children into it so that anyone who wants to join us can do the same!
In our house that would be kindergarten (D, 5) and grade 6 (M, 12).


Here's what we did for our first week:

We looked up the Arctic Circle on a map. M filled it in, identifying countries and larger bodies of water. D just grasped the idea that it's at the top of the globe along with the North Pole and Santa's workshop. :)

We learned about Matthew Henson and Robert Peary, the first explorers to reach the North Pole along with their 4 Inuit guides.D just grasped the concept that they had to try it 4 different times before they were successful.  M made a notebook page about Henson and Peary.

We looked up the route they took, watched this video recreating their journey, and discussed how amazing it was that Henson, an African-American man, was a full partner in this expedition even though this was the turn of the century and what a great step forward it was from the horrors of slavery only a few short years before.

For D's math work, I purchased this fun penguin puzzle/addition game on Teachers Notebook. We've also been doing these free "Odd and Even" math pages. He's been enjoying it! I'm going to try to put together something myself for next week, but with the holidays I haven't had as much time as I'd like.

Just for fun, we tried our hand at the polar bear drawing lesson on ExploringNature.Org

They came out pretty well, I think!