icebergs, straight ahead!

Many moons ago, when I was an eager, spirited young student teacher, I created a thematic unit (a series of interconnected learning activities centered around a general topic) on the Arctic Regions.  It was my first public school teaching experience, and I loved everything about it--mostly that it made me realize how interconnected the experiences of teaching and learning are--can you teach, (I mean truly TEACH), without learning? how much richer is learning when one is also teaching?

Anyways, ironically, Seven asked me if we could do some homeschool stuff about polar animals because dear old Auntie Mel had lent him a book and he is now very interested in polar animals.  This is what I love--the learner leading the teacher.  And so, welcome to our Polar journey (nicely coinciding with winter!):

We experiemented with ice and water--what properties do they share? smell, color
What properties are different? temperature, shape, liquid/solid

The ice sculptures were so inviting, we took out our polar animals from Santa and enjoyed some dramatic play.  Through this play I could see both Four and Seven making connections between these particular animals and a habitat of ice, cold, and water--which grew deeper as the day wore on and ice melted to create an ocean.  Making such connections build a basic structure of understanding about the Arctic regions--climate, wildlife, and culture.

ice cave for the polar bear

walrus resting and sliding on an iceberg (new vocabulary)

the sundial

No exploration of the polar regions would be complete without delving into the earth's rotation of the sun, which led us to measuring time by the sun.  This was really fun and was daddy's idea:  we took an empty wrapping paper roll and taped it to the windowsill around 9:30am as the morning light was streaming into the living room.  We marked it's shadow with tape on the couch.  About 20 minutes later, Seven yelled out, "It moved!", and we marked the new shadow on the floor...and so on and so on with different lengths of intervals until about 11:30am.  We noticed how the shadow moved pretty quickly (it was about 3 minutes between the second and third tape mark!)  This was so fun, and remarkable, because so often, Seven will ask how long something is by holding his arms apart, "Is 10 minutes this long?  Is an hour this long?"  And I never know how to answer him, which is usually how I reply because I can't equate time in that way---but this did!  We actually got to see how far apart 10 minutes is!