Antarctica Winter Fun!

Each month I pick a theme for our classroom and this month, as you know, I picked winter. I also have decided to pick a continent to focus on at the end of each month. This month I picked Antarctica (for obvious reasons). So we are spending this week talking about the world's winter wonderland! Bunny loves this continent for some reason and both girls are enjoying this study! On Monday we talked about the continent as a whole and Bunny was fascinated that in Antarctica is summer right now (even though its still really cold). She also loved the idea that the Emperor Penguin is as tall as her! For our art I made some play dough (left it white with some glitter in it). The recipe is from My Montessori Journey here. With our dough we made the shape of Antarctica. Bunny wasn't sure how to do it so, I had to show her how to start with circle and then add the the peninsula and push in the bays. She made one all herself ans was really proud!



I also had a seal and penguin cookie cutter for the girls to use and they loved it! Pup broke her dough into tiny pieces and then stuffed her cookie cutter full! Then she would ask me to push out the shape! They had so much fun!



Today we did our grocery shopping all morning so our school work was only one project! I read a book about the Antarctica wildlife and then we made an antarctic scene using ice cubes of different sizes. Bunny wanted the Arctic Toob from Safari LTD. (you can get them at Hobby Lobby) and this project was a way for her to have some fun with it! After talking about the difference between Antarctica and the Arctic, we got to work making our cold world! This is what we came up with.

After a while I gave Bunny some salt to use with the ice hoping that she would make some discoveries of her own! She did! She saw how it looked like snow, how it "melted" (dissolved), and she wanted to know if pepper would do the same. I couldn't find my pepper shaker (I cant wait to see where it turns up)so I gave her sugar! She worked for about a half hour (then I think she got cold) and I'm sure that this will be something that she will want to do it again. Pup played for a little bit, but she wasn't very interested! This ideas was really great and Bunny is able to pick out which animals are from Antarctica and which ones are from the arctic! This idea came from My Montessori Journey. Check it out! I will be posting about our Antarctica continent box, so check back soon!