Polar Regions Unit

We're getting to the end of our Around the World Homeschool Curriculum and Biome Units, so we're actually done with countries. This week we focused on the polar regions.

Since we didn't quite have enough resources and activities for Tundra to have its own post, I'm throwing those in here. We did these a different week, however.

Tundra Biome

20 Fun Facts About Tundra Habitats

What if There Were No Lemmings?

Angela's Glacier

Counting on Earth's Biomes

The Frozen Worlds

24 Hours in Antarctica

If Polar Bears Disappeared

You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer

Polar Animal Adaptations

Polar Bears and Penguins

Magic School Bus Arctic Adventure

Just Ask: What is an Iceberg?

Awesome Walruses & Cool Penguins

Desert Hare vs Arctic Hare

Living in the Arctic

Icebergs, Ice Caps and Glaciers

One Day On Our Blue Planet: In The Antarctic

Polar Bear, Why is your World Melting?

And Tango Makes Three

How Big is a Million?

Glacier Adventure

Except Antarctica

Sophie Scott Goes South

Little Walrus Warning

Polar Opposites

Cold Paws Warm Heart

The Whale Who Swam Through Time: A Two-Hundred-Year Journey in the Arctic

Where on Earth? Atlas: The World As You've Never Seen It Before

A Map for Penguins

Polar poetry from Around the World on 80 Legs

Read alouds for the week were Secret Explorers Missing Scientist and Race the Wild Arctic Freeze

Sticker page from Adventures Around the Globe Activity Book

Maze from Around the World Mazes

Antarctica page from page from Beginning Geography

Arctic Vocabulary cards with the Arctic Toob.

We try to do at least one solo logic game every week, so Penguins on Ice was a perfect fit.

We played Ice Cool. He tends to avoid adversarial games, so we didn't complete the game (the rest of the family likes the game, though).

Hey, That's My Fish! went over much better.

Polar Animals search and find puzzle. The borders of these make them easier to put together.

For art, he did a tape resist penguin from Arty Crafty Kids

Videos

Tot School: Creepy Crawlies

For Tot School, we have been working on a shape a week, as well as doing other themed activities. The most recent theme was Creepy Crawlies (bugs)

Matching Insects and Bugs Vocabulary cards and our Toob insects. She insisted on doing it while holding a toy shot, despite that making it much harder.

Butterfly light table page with  magnetic bingo chips 

Bug Jar Counting. We used a  six sided die and some bug erasers.

More counting with these sticker sheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Bug playdough tray with cookie cutters, beads, buttons and backyard bug rollers.

"Fishing" for bugs with this puzzle. She loved to pull them out, but wasn't great at putting them back in yet.

Wooden insect puzzles from this set. Some she can do more easily than others.

Bug matching game. I have her two boards and the corresponding cards. She had a fun time matching them up. When she's older we can try to play bingo with them.

Butterfly puzzle. This one she likes a lot and can pretty much do independently.

Sensory bin with Toob insects.

Bee dot page. I use pom pom magnets and had her match the colors. (printable here)

Bee line tracing. She liked trying, but couldn't actually do this well, yet.

Which is different bee page. She's a little too young for this, so we mostly just talked about it.

Toddler Bug Books:

You're My Little Cuddle Bug (one of her all time faves)

Peek Inside Bug Homes

The Very Busy Spider

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 

Tot School: Diamonds

 We have been working on a shape a week, as well as doing other themed activities. This week was Diamonds and Creepy Crawlies. 

These are the shape related activities. Juniper was about 22 months.

This was her little area on our play room wall. The poster is from The Learning Effect. The rest is her completed work for the week.

She's been really into painting lately, so she just painted the diamond.

Practicing tracing in her dry erase center. She still needs a lot of help, but she enjoys it. (Printable found here)

Play dough included some fondant cutters and  a stamp. 

Coloring some diamonds. She can read all the colors and knew what she needed to do, but had some fun coloring the some diamonds the wrong colors. She's 1, no big deal. (Printable found here).

She seems to like using stickers on her dot pages the best, so she did that.

Australia and New Zealand (Coral Reef Biome) Unit

 This week in our Around the World Homeschool Curriculum we focused on Australia and New Zealand. We did this concurrently with studying the Coral Reef Biome. Since we did them together, I decided to make just one post with all the resources.

Books:

As always, we read many great spines on these countries, but here are some extra picture books we read:

Diary of a Wombat

Once Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree

Living in Australia

Australia Page from A World of Gratitude

Poetry about Australian animals in Around the World on 80 Legs

We also looked through the Australian pages in our various atlases (you can see which ones we use here). This spread is from the Lift-The-Flap Picture Atlas

Coral Reef

The World of Coral Reefs

The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World's Coral Reefs: The Story of Ken Nedimyer and the Coral Restoration Foundation

Peek Inside a Coral Reef

Coral Reefs

One of the Great Barrier Reef pages in The Wonder Garden

Coral Pages in Life Cycles

Activities:

Flag from Little Passports

Great Barrier Reef page in Adventures Around the Globe Activity Book

Oceania pages in the Barefoot Books World Atlas Sticker Book.

Australia page from page from Beginning Geography

Page in his Flag Sticker Atlas

We played Koala Capers. He had fun looking at the pictures to guess which country each outfit was from.

Coral Reef vocabulary cards and Toob figurines.

Sydney page from Seek and Find Around the World

Maze from Around the World Mazes

Recipe:

We made both Anzac biscuits (New Zealand) and Sausage Rolls (Australia) from Global Feast cookbook.

Read Aloud:

For read aloud, I read him Race the Wild Great Reef Games. I had previously read him Greetings from Somewhere the Mystery of the Coral Reef. He also read Rainbow the Koala, which is a graphic novel, so not really a picture book but not really a read aloud.

Art:

For art, we learned about Australia aboriginal dot art through this video. Then Archer made a kangaroo.

Videos: