Over the weekend, I froze some arctic animal figurines in blocks of ice (to get them in the middle, I froze a layer of water first, then added the figure and more water before freezing again). On the way to work I stopped and picked up a small bag of ice from the supermarket. I dumped the ice into the water table, and set the ice blocks with animals on top. I supplied a few cups of water (and had a pitcher nearby for refills), pipettes, and a couple screwdrivers for my kiddos to use on their rescue mission. As they freed the animals, we identified them and they started to figure out what all they had in common, eventually coming up with the theme for the day: animals of the arctic.

The week’s theme was animals, but I could hardly visit the arctic without talking about the aurora borealis. I showed them some pictures, then we did marble painting in greens, purples, and blues.

I knew I needed some sort of “blubber” activity, but with only a couple of kids, it didn’t make sense to just line up and dip your hand in cold water with and without the insulation - I wanted my kiddos to get a little more out of it than just “fat keeps you warm.” I asked them for some ideas of how animals stayed warm in the cold of the arctic. They came up with fur, fat, and shelter (I loved hearing shelter from G5 - I hadn’t even considered that as a possible answer!) Then, we tested out all different insulators (in the icy water table, now that it had melted a little more - no need to get more bowls, ice, or water!) I used produce bags to hold yarn (for “fur”), feathers, a little fabric sleeve I’d sewn (to mimic just being a person wearing a shirt), and finally, the Crisco. I had some rubber gloves for them to put on in case they didn’t want to get their hand in the Crisco (B7 and G5 used the glove, G2 didn’t touch the Crisco at all). I made data collection pages for them to write which insulator they were testing, and how it felt to them. It was really cool to hear their descriptions and how they chose to take data. You can see how B7 wrote numbers in some rows - he’s saying that he could keep just his hand, as a control, in the water for 28 seconds, then said probably about 100 seconds for the yarn, and what looks to be approximately 1 trillion for the blubber - just “normal”.

Next up was following along a how-to-draw video on youtube. We do this about once a week these days. It started during distance learning when B7’s art teacher was doing this style of art classes over Zoom, and both B7 and G5 really enjoy it! To fit our arctic theme, we drew narwhals.

Our final activity of the day was charades. Since they were new to the game, and since the animals weren’t as familiar to them, I made a poster of choices that both the actor and the guessers could see. I left them unlabelled in my preparation, so the first thing we did was identify them, then we were off! The parents have told me that they’ve played a couple evenings as well. Bonus: this doubles as a giant colouring sheet!