Here is our second continent box: Antarctica plus the Arctic, just in time to wish you a Happy World Penguin Day. I have decided to include activities about the Arctic and tundra in general in this box because of lack of space available at home. However, this creates a great opportunity to talk with Pinky about the North and South pole and their differences/similarities between them.

Photo: Our continent Box plus a green bin where I keep the books available. After we finish the Continent unit, everything goes inside the big bin. The lower photo is another sensory box with white felt, packing peanuts, white flower petals, scrap paper and aquarium marbles and rocks (for the penguins to build their nests). The photo on the right is our version of the Scrimshaw (ivory soap carvings).

 

For this box, we took advantage of the snowy Winter days and the snow just to re-create a mini-world. If you doesn’t have the snow factor advantage, you could recreate a sensory box with ice…or shaving cream….or white/blue play-doh….There are many available options all over the Internet!

Let’s see what did we learn with the Antarctica continent box:

Books

We explored books about: Atlas, The world, Arctic (Balto, Inuits, canada, alaska, iceland, etc), penguins. We LOVE books in this house!!! In the last photo, Pinky is playing after we read the Magic tree house chapter book: Polar bears past bedtime.

Sensory Box with Ice and Snow

Pinky played with different sensory box set-ups using water, snow, ice, scrap paper, packing peanuts, etc.

3 part cards

Parts of a Polar bear.

Parts of a penguin

Arctic animals….cards-objects matching activity….on the back of the card we have some information about the animals.

Clothing

Antarctica scientist clothing and Frosty the snowman clothing…..both need lots of clothes!!! lol

Inuits- Balto story and movie time

We don’t usually watch t.v.; however, comparing a book and it’s movie was such an interesting activity. She amazed me!!

Penguins!!!

Puzzle from Dollar tree store!

 

Hold your egg like a Penguin! Too funny and hard!!! lol Excellent for the snow storm lockdown…

 

7 Penguins of Antarctica craft. Idea from Montessori Tidbits (link below)

 

Check out these great sites for more activities to include in your Antarctica or Arctic unit study:

1. Living Montessori Now: Montessori-Inspired Arctic and Antarctic Unit
2. Joy of Kindergarten: Getting My Penguins In a Row
3. Parent, teach, play: Penguins – Play & Learning!
4. Trillium Montessori: Antarctica: Overview, Antarctica: Penguins (free Penguins and Their Chicks printable), and Antarctica: Whales (How Long is a Whale? free printable cards)
5. Jojoebi: Penguins 3 part cards free
6. Kingdom of the three princesses: Our Continent Boxes – Antarctica (lots of resources/links about transportation, food chain, clothing, etc.)
7. Mondorfment: Mondorfment Continent Swap Hop and Giveaway (free life cycle of the Emperor Penguin)
8. Montessori Tidbits: Penguins of Antarctica craft (from here comes the 7 penguins of Antarctica craft idea)
9. Scholastic: Lesson 2: The Extreme Antarctic 
10. Counting Coconuts: Our Continent Bags - Antarctica
11. Discovery days and Montessori Moments: Antarctica Box!
12. Montessori MOMents: Antarctica Cultural Exchange Package
13. What did we do all day?: Continent Boxes: Antarctica
14. The Pinay Homeschooler: Continent: Antarctica Unit, Arctic Animals Control Cards (FREE PRINTABLE)
15. Little things: Very Last First Time (Arctic unit)
16. New bee homeschooler: Serie of great post about the Arctic.
17. Learn, create, love: { Arctic Animal Crafts }

 

Visit our Pinterest Board: Continent Box: Antarctica, Arctic, for more amazing ideas!

Thanks for visiting!!!

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Continuing with our geography study, we did an Animal Habitats activity. I wanted to do a “formal” presentation for Pinky a while back; however, I never got the opportunity until now. My goal with this is to settle down the basic knowledge before starting to “formally” learn about each one of our Continents.

*Note that I wrote` the word formal between (“)…..this is because she had been exposed to these themes for quite a time now but we didn’t discuss, explore or manage them individually.

First we talked about land, water and air.

Then, we continued with the Biomes and the animals we find there. At Montessori Print Shop you can find a short description about each biome plus great animals photos that live in each. (link below)We have multiple atlas books that we used as a reference.

Pinky classifying her animals cards (from MPS).

 

Another activity we did was to classify our animals figurines by their habitats using a 8x 11 printable of each one. (So sorry I can’t remember where I got these. They are in French. However, they are easy to make just printing a 8x 11 photo from Google.

 

Animals Habitats

 

House (Safari pets toob)

 

Farm (farm animals toob)

 

Desert (Safari desert animals toob)

 

Ocean (ocean animals)

 

Rainforest- Jungle (rainforest animals toob)

Grassland (wild animals toob)

 

Tundra (Arctic-polar animals toob)

 

Air- Birds from our Bird unit (link below)

The last activity we did was one of Pinky’s favorite ones: using Stickers!!! She LOVE stickers and make up stories with them.

 

Check out these links for more activities or great printables:

• Animal Habitats cards from Montessori Print Shop.
• Animals habitats-Biomes from the Homeschool Den for free.
• For toddlers here is an animal habitat felt matching activity that is soooo cute!
• Free animal habitat printable activity with clipart.
• I found our animal habitats cards at Early learning with Marta and Eaton.
• Our Farm theme unit fun here.

                                     

• Our Birds theme unit over here.

                                     

Have fun!!!

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