ARCTIC WEEK: PK-4

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Ana's Week

Looking back at my lesson plans, I had such a great and fun week planned out. Despite all of my planning, things didn’t quite turn out the way I thought they would. For our Arctic week, we were continuing our Thanksgiving trip to visit my mom in Charlotte. First thing Monday morning, my step-grandfather passed away, so you can imagine that the week became more centered around supporting my stepdad and mother as they made arrangements with funeral directors and doing our best to distract and entertain where we could. For the times where the girls would be in the way or problematic, I was grateful I did have some plans to keep us busy, but I will either finish the unit at a later date or save the materials to do again next year with both girls.

One of the must do items of the week was the arctic sensory bin. Not only will you be able to use the bin later for a winter week or “Elf on the Shelf Snow Day,” but both girls loved playing in it every day. It was a great distraction and fun tool, especially when filled with the Safari Arctic toob products. We even printed out and studied matching cards for the items in the toob, so it was able to be more educational. The bathtub glacier was so easy to make and such a great way to discuss global warming. Plus, the kids loved playing with Arctic animals on the glacier while it lasted. We also loved the Animals of the World felt map I found at Target. Even though it wasn’t just focused on the Arctic areas, I was able to talk with Aria about continents, hemispheres, and what types of animals are in cold or warm places. We will be able to reuse the map for any animal units, too, which is great.

The winter arctic movement cards were a hit with the girls, who both tried to do the movements together. They even took the cards and Aria would try and get her grandparents involved in doing the movements with her. Naya’s Arctic Adventures tv show on Amazon was a great find during the week and really helped to solidify concepts of things you might find in the Arctic and Antarctic areas.
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The week ended Thursday, when we headed back to Columbus from Charlotte and spent the next few days unpacking, mailing out Christmas cards, and present shopping. So, overall, I’m not entirely sure how successful the short unit was. But we stayed busy, learned a little bit, and had fun so that must count for something! Excited and ready to now dive into our Elf on the Shelf boxes and Christmas units!

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Jessica's Week
If ever there was a week for reliving my own childhood memories this was it. For those who don’t know I was born and raised in western Michigan where the winters are cold and “lake effect” snow often leaves you digging out. Most people dread these conditions and while I’ll admit it’s less than ideal if you have to travel, for a stay at home mom it sure is fun! Our “snow days” were a great opportunity for snow lessons. We met bomb cyclone head on with Arctic week and for the first time in Ts life it finally felt like we truly are living in the arctic. It was so cold in fact the traditional outdoor winter activities like sledding and large scale snowman building didn’t really work so we got to use our creativity. Taegan’s personal favorite was stomping and chomping ice from the driveway. We kept our favorite pieces to adorn small snow creatures (for example ears on a snow arctic bunny) and tossed the rest off the bridge. By adding food color to a spray bottle of warm water we had diy snow paint, and we shoveled the driveway into 5 large mounds for climbing....throw a flag or small toy on top and for a great exercise she can scale the mountains to claim it! When it got into the negative temps I decided we’d had enough outdoor fun and we ventured to a local indoor ice rink for our second trip ice skating. I took her for Valentine’s Day last year and wanted to see if it was an easier at four than three. I’m still not quite sure she’s old enough to make it a regular occurrence (mostly bc the rinks near us won’t allow cones or kids walker type devices on the ice) but we had fun. She made it around the rink a few times on her own and loves having me stand behind and hold her up while pushing us along fast (well fast-ish 😋) I’m far from a great skater but neither of us fell down so that was good!

One goal I had this week was to allow myself time to put away Christmas decorations so I tried to focus our indoor time on activities T could do with little to no help. This can be challenging especially when it comes to crafts but I found a very simple tinfoil icicle that ended up being repeated until I ran out of tinfoil lol. She could roll, crush and shape a piece into icicle form without help and then paint or glue paint and glitter it before I helped attach a pipe cleaner hanger. We hung several from the drop ceiling in our basement but I thought it could also be fun to make them into an Elsa style mobile. We also tried ice cube painting but I suggest dropping 10-15 drops of color into each ice cube mold bc ours turned out too light to really make a pretty paint.
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My other fail this week was pouring ice...I thought this sounded sooo cool that we tried two different experiments but sadly neither turned out quite the way they were advertised. Mrs. Plemons cold ice/salt mixture just didn’t have specific enough directions I think and mine froze before making it out of the freezer. So I turned to the baking soda/vinegar hot ice. Unfortunately, I either waited too long to pull it out of the freezer or who knows bc it poured out as a runny half liquid and just slowly hardened into salty slush lol. Oh well, if I ever find one that works perfect I’ll let ya know! The blubber experiment we did last year is a no-fail and snowstorm in a bottle turned out pretty cool too.