January Theme: Winter/Arctic/Antarctica/Penguins

This theme could carry us through the entire year if we wanted it to!  It has been fun learning about cute little penguins in the southern hemisphere, arctic animals in the northern hemisphere, and all the cool things that go with a winter theme in general.  The kids love this theme (so do I--even if I'm not a huge snow fan!) :)

Before you do a unit study... you must take a trip to the public library... here are SOME of our great finds! (we actually came home with 2 canvas bags full!!)

                               We found an Animal Planet Video that had Arctic animal rescues as well as a penguin hatching video... oh my... we LOVED these!!!

                                   

Here are just some of the fun activities we've done: (note: almost all of these activity ideas came from great blogs I found on Pinterest!!) :)

 We read The Mitten by: Jan Brett and then Aden retold it to us with magnetic characters from the book... he also made his own printable book that he can read that basically summarizes the story. 

                                                    Penguin Fact and opinion Eggs:


Matching penguin pictures to their name cards.  Also matching penguin toys to their matching picture.

The fact cards contained the height of each type of penguin.  Kendyl and I measured string the height of each penguin and taped them to the info. cards.  Then we lined them up from shortest to tallest.

One night, we decided to have a movie night with homemade 'snow balls'... we cut the biscuit dough...

...rolled them into balls... cooked them in oil... rolled them in powdered sugar....

                                                         
                                                      ...and enjoyed them!!  

                                                                    YUM!!!!!

             We made a Venn Diagram with hula hoops and used facts about the Arctic and Antarctica... so much learning going on here... love the team work!!

                    A little 'snow' (shaving cream) fun!  Aden has 'made' the Arctic and is using Arctic animal toys and Eskimos to enjoy the snowy wonderland!

            Kendyl is on the other end of the planet (aka: kitchen table)... Antarctica with penguins! (now, we learned that only 2 types of penguins: Emperor and Adelie, actually live IN Antarctica... some live in the seas surrounding it, others live in Australia, South America, or South Africa--but ALL penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere!)

                           Fun Sight Word practice.... feed the hungry penguin some sight word fish!

           Exploring career choices in the Arctic and in Antarctica... Kendyl decided that a Vet in the Arctic would be the best choice for her from the list we compiled.  Here is her info. sheet, business card, and art project of herself as a vet. :)  

This project was fun and we love how they turned out!  Mix equal parts glue and shaving cream... then paint snowmen with the mixture... before it dries (which takes quite awhile) add clear or white glitter for some shimmer, paper scarves, hats, arms, etc.  They dry similar to puff paint and feel so cool!

You can't have a Winter theme without playing in the snow!

                                                            King of the snow!

There were other writing, math, art, science, and reading projects for this theme that we did not photograph... we'll still be doing some 'snow/winter' things in the coming weeks...but we'll be moving on to some new unit studies also.