Artic Friends

Each year at the end of my winter unit I do a unit on Arctic friends, animal and people.  We talk about Alaska and the north pole and Northern lights.  the last two years I have had the children paint their interpretation of northern lights at the easel.  We water down tempera ( about 1/2 and 1/2)  and they begin brushing from the top and letting it drip down.  We use yellow, red and blue.  They turn out very nice.Sorry I have no pictures


During this week we also learn about polar bears, penguins, walruses, seals and whales.  We pretend to do scrimshaw on walrus tooth.  For this we use Styrofoam plates and cut teeth shapes out.  They then draw on the Styrofoam with a shish kabob skewer pointy end and then we brush black tempera on and rub it off.  It leaves the design in the groves and gives the effect of scrimshaw.

For a penguin activity we spend every line waddling like penguins and  we make a penguin fact book that looks like a giant penguin.  I have elaborated on the idea I originally found for the book by having the children take two large black ovals we fold one hot dog style and crease the line in.  They cut on the line, to make the wings,  we take a small orange oval and they cut hamburger style to make the feet.  The children are cutting and learning about folding vertically and horizontally.  The eyes are sticker and the beak is folded paper that I have pre-cut triangles in to make the beak.  We have 5 round balls with the penguin words on them.  I want to say this came from and old Mailbox magazine, but I am not positive.  The title is PENGUIN PALS.  We sort our 5 pages and put them in order and staple our little book.  We then add the white round book to the center of our oval penguin and there you have the giant penguin book.  This is not art, because the children don't have total free reign on what they accomplish.  This is a learning project which involves, listening ears, cutting, folding, and pre-reading skills. Everyones wings end up in different directions and they are funny.  The children think it is fun though, so that makes it great for me.  After all who wouldn't like a giant penguin book.  I sweet mom took a picture of her daughters penguin along with a snowman that we got the idea from another teacher blog.  Both turned out so cute

The last thing we did this for the finale of our winter studies was make the sock snowman that I saw on another blog.  I have been hunting all afternoon for the link and have yet to find who to give the credit to.  It was wonderful.  And the children have something to really keep.