The North Pole & Arctic Shelter

On Day 17 of Winter Wonderland with Mother Goose Time we learned all about the North Pole.  Not the Santa North Pole, the real one.  My favorite lesson was called Spinning Earth.  We talked about how the north pole is at the top and the south pole is at the bottom of the earth.  I got out our globe and showed them on there.  I also showed them the middle or the equator. 

We talked about how the earth spins on it's axis and I had Lachlan put one hand on the top of a balloon and the other on the bottom.  I marked a line on the top of the balloon to show, hypothetically, where we are on the earth.  Then I explained that each time the earth spins all the way around it makes a day.  It happened to be 10 days to his birthday, so I told him to spin the balloon ten times.  The next day we did it again and I had him spin it 9 times.  Super fun way to count down!

 Day 18 we learned about Arctic Shelter.

At the breakfast table we got out the cube manipulatives that Mother Goose Time provided us this month and I had them count how many squares made up the cube. 6. 

We sang the song "Cold Winds" to the tune of "London Bridge".

The arctic wind is blowing strong,
Blowing strong, blowing strong.
The arctic wind is blowing strong,
Peter; go inside!

Peter thought this was a great song and made sure I sang it for everyone sitting at the table including Adam and I.

While still at the table we started with Arctic Colors which had us putting together our Bilingual Book.  I have the boys cut apart the pictures and then I show them the last word in the sentence on the blank pages.  They sound out the item in the picture, tell me what letter it starts with and then they find the matching word.  I have to say, I mostly was doing it this way with Lachlan, as I wasn't sure Peter was quite there yet.  But with out me looking he got started all on his own and got them all right.

We put the pages in order and stapled them into a book.  Then they drew pictures on the front.  Peter wanted to draw a polar bear but said he didn't know how.  So I walked him threw, first drawing a circle for his head and then his ears and so on.

 Lachlan drew a cozy cabin with a light on inside and icicles on the outside.

 Meanwhile . . . Adam was being cute.

While they were drawing I set up for the next lesson Igloo Run in the kitchen.  I put the phonics cards of the letters we learned this month around room, I, T and P.  Then I put the hands on letters in the bag and the igloo phonic card.

 Here you can see the lesson we are doing in the Teacher Guide.

 They drew a hands on letter out of the bag and ran it to the right phonics card.

After we had all the letters matched up we moved on to Inuit Art Sculptures.  For this we had to make salt dough.  Mother Goose Time provided us with the recipe and photos of other sculptures. 

It really does take a lot of salt!  I did 1/2 cup salt and 1 cup flower.  It made plenty of dough for both the boys.

Before we even got started with the scooping and the mixing of the dough, I talked to them about sculptures and how in some cultures people use sculptures to tell stories.  I loved this part of the project.  The discussion question for the lesson asked, what kinds of stories does your family tell you?  At the moment the boys both drew a blank.  So I racked my brain trying to remember what stories we tell that they seemed to like. 

The story of the monkey's throwing mangoes at our bungalow when we are on our honeymoon always comes to mind.  The boys giggled as they remembered the story.  That seemed to break the ice and they came up with stories from there. 

We got to work mixing the dough and then I gave them each a place mat to build a sculpture on. 

Just in case you are wondering how we kept Adam out of the mess.  He got banished to the exersaucer.  He didn't seem to mind. 

Lachlan decided to make a penguin, which we have of course been learning about this month.  But I can't say he has any other interaction with a penguin.  I did bring up the time we saw them at the zoo in order to tie it back to the storytelling part of the sculptures. 

Happy as a clam.