Arctic Wonders
The Kinder Bunnies often surprise me with the topics they want to learn more about each month. This December and January were all about the North Pole and Arctic animals. One of our math stories, The Arctic Fives Arrive by Elinor Pincez, intrigued my students so much that we spent two months learning about different Arctic animals and their unique habitats. The book is a beautiful way to introduce the concept of skip counting or counting in larger groups. Each new animal arrives in groups of five to an iceberg, making room for the next group.
We extended our learning by exploring how these animals survive in the Arctic cold. We conducted our own experiment to see if blubber really does keep a polar bear and walrus warm enough to swim in freezing water. We practiced using tally marks to record our survey results, and the Bunnies soon noticed that our tally marks were also grouped by fives!
Two brave scientists testing our hypothesis that blubber should keep you warm if you're an Arctic animal swimming in the freezing water. They placed a gloved hand inside a blubber bag while their other hand went into "freezing" water. We had great conversations about what it means to be cold and wet. We live in Southern California, where it happened to be eighty degrees outside the day we did this experiment, so naturally, we wanted our own snow day. It was a great chance to use our measurement skills.
After our polar plunge, we went inside to experience ice exploration. After all, the animals in the Arctic Fives Arrive were on an iceberg. Two bags of ice, tweezers, droppers, and string are a great way to spend time exploring and understanding how water and ice work.
We measured two cups of hair conditioner to two boxes of baking soda to make our "fake" snow day. While it wasn't the real thing, they had fun forming snowballs and using measuring tools.
Snow Day Fun!
Our learning wasn't completed until we built our own igloos with Keva Planks and measured our Antarctic penguins. We enjoyed the book Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice by Steve Metzger.
