The Polar Regions for Gradeschoolers

January is usually the best time to have winter themed activities or do either Antarctica or Arctic activities.  It is the time when kids can envision these frozen part of the planet due to the cold/extreme weather.  To start with, I set up an invitation to play tray in our shelf and displayed books to go along with it.  These can be accessed by the boys whenever they want to and not age specific, big boys and little brothers can share and play with the tray!   

Our invitation to play tray contains the following:

• Safari Toob Penguins
• Safari Toob Arctic
• Schleich Arctic animals
• Playmobil Penguin Habitat Superset (the best!)

The books we used are:  (FREE shipping in Book Depository!)

• Usborne’s Antarctica
• Usborne’s Polar Bear
• Penguins

For Mavi’s activities, we started by doing a visual presentation of what Antarctica and the Arctic region looks like.  This was accomplished by recreating the landmarks of both polar regions.  You can read more about it here.

I also prepared some fact cards about the different animals that lives in both regions.  Here Mavi matched the animals to what the card is describing.  If you want to try this, have your kids read the description, in this way they can practice their reading skills and improve their vocabulary.

More fact cards from our Polar Region Pack.   These cards describes the regions with high quality images.

We watched March of the Penguins and Mavi and I feel sorry for the mommy Penguin.  A lovely documentary showing the hardships of the female penguin just to feed their chick.  I highly recommend it.  Here are some of our visual materials which I made years ago when Mavi was just in preschool.  These images were sourced out randomly in Google, printed and laminated.

Same thing with these pictures except that I printed them in a photo paper.  These shows the different transporation used in Antarctica (scientists and tourists), the different ice formations  and in general, the environment in Antarctica.

Benefits of these activities:

• Deeper understanding ont he environment of the polar regions
• Able to differentiate the Arctic to that of Antarctica
• Tell what animals inhabits the Arctic and Antarctica
• Learn about the life cycle of the penguins

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