Polar Bears

It seems to me that there are two great times to learn about polar animals: in the winter, when they come to mind along with snow and ice, and in the summer time, when the idea of cooling off sounds lovely.  We've done both, and either way, the children love it!

You surely know by now that children's books are a huge part of my planning and teaching!  I try to also include both fiction and non-fiction.  While it's more traditional to tell our little ones stories, I've found that they're very interested in learning how their world works, and find non-fiction fascinating too.

I love to make this cute polar bear craft with my youngest kiddos, but for my first graders I'd add the non-fiction booklet to it too.  Either way, these sure look cute for a display!

We love to do hands on activities!  Here we are, exploring the idea of the arctic ocean, using killer whales, seals, polar bears, Alaskan crabs and more.  Do you see the ice cubes in the second picture?  Some of our animals like to get out on the ice, and float along or rest for a bit.  (Some of our friends like to play with ice and water when it's hot outside too!)

We often make hand prints or foot prints to go along with our learning themes, and polar bears are no exception.  We even made narwhal prints, and watched an awesome video about narwhals!

Learning to read sight words is an important part of kindergarten and first grade,  so I made this sight word game for us to practice with.  (It includes cards for letter learners, and PP, P and 1st grade sight words, so it's pretty flexible. Who wouldn't want to help those baby bears get to their momma, right?

I've found a lot of children - and adults for that matter - don't realize that polar bears and penguins don't share the ice.  Polar bears live in the Arctic, near the north pole, and penguins (mostly) live in the Antarctic, near the south pole.  Here's a little song I wrote to help the children remember the difference: 

Download it free by clicking on the link or the picture!  If you have a map or globe in your classroom, have a child point to the correct location as you sing each verse.

While you're reading and singing the song, how about some more facts about polar bears and other arctic animals?  I laid them flat for a picture, but they work really well in a pocket chart (but pocket charts don't photograph well, with all the reflections off the plastic).

I like to use sentence to picture matching activities as a literacy center, and most of my students are really good about working with the materials.  Still, sometimes we need to show written work, or have some kind of accountability for the students, so they all come with follow up worksheets.  Here's one of them:

Another fun, hands on sensory activity to do is to build with ice cubes.  You can certainly use plain old regular ice cubes, chances are good that you have some on hand, or if not, you can buy a bag of ice at any grocery store or gas station.  I like to make over-sized ice cubes, using whatever empty containers are available and headed for the recycling bin.  It's amazing how much fun giant ice cubes are as a building tool, and they take a nice long time to melt too.

If you're building with ice cubes, you might also want to show the children a video of how an igloo is built!  I like this one.  After you watch this, be prepared to see a lot of building going on - and have some nice large blocks on hand.

We've also explored how polar bears thick layer of fat, or blubber, helps to insulate them - you can see that post here.

So what other activities do you like to do when you're learning about polar bears?  I'd love to know! 

Paula

P.S. Stop back by next week to see how we like to learn about penguins.

TPT Seller Challenge Week 1: Makeover Madness (and a SALE!)

For the next 4 weeks I'll be participating in a TPT Seller Challenge, hosted by 4 great bloggers (see their links at the end of this post).

This week's challenge is to take a product, and make it even better. I'm really excited to participate, because that's exactly what I've been working on for the last 6 weeks or so.

Over the last year, I've made 38 sentence picture match activities - wow!  When I first began making them, they were 10-12 pages, included 12 sentences and pictures to match, 1-2 vocabulary pages, 1-2 follow up worksheets, a leveled list of sight words used, and of course, directions.  They make awesome reading centers, and when I taught kindergarteners, they LOVED them.   

Recently I decided to add a little more to my sentence picture match sets, and I've been working at it.  My current and revised sets have 18 sentences and pictures to match, including more diverse reading levels, so teachers can choose the sentences that are just right for each student or reading group, challenging but not overwhelming readers with different skill levels.  I've also been enlarging the graphics to make them more appealing to kiddos, adding thematic writing paper, and a greater variety of worksheets that cover even more skills.  I think these are good changes!

One of my sets that I needed to update was this one:

Looking back at it, I wanted to make the vocabulary pages more appealing, so I added a border, spread the vehicles out, and enlarged them.  I also added a page of road signs.

Next, I added 6 more sentences and pictures, including a couple of questions.  The extra sentences added the following words: this, police, trash, green, have, you, ever, been, in, taxi, cab, some, call, these, love, bugs, five, road, signs.  Many of these are sight words, but others are transportation vocabulary words, and are included on the vocabulary posters - supporting students as they decode each sentence.  The enhanced vocabulary pages also work well with the thematic writing paper I added.  I chose to use a fire truck picture on the writing paper, so it can be used with a transportation, community helpers, or fire safety theme.

Here is the resulting update:

What do you think?  I'm really happy with the improvements, but I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions.  Is there another skill you'd like to see added to my sentence picture match sets, or maybe a theme you think I should make a set for? I am open to your suggestions either here on my blog, or at my TeachersPayTeachers store.

As part of the makeover challenge, I'm putting this product and all 38 of my sentence picture match activities on sale for the next 4 days, through Friday June 19th.  If you are a bargain hunter (and who isn't?!) you may want to consider getting my other sentence picture match products at lower prices before I update them.  You can always re-download for free on TeachersPayTeachers, getting improved products at no extra cost!  To find out if any of your purchases have been updated, go to the My Purchases tab.  Updates will have a red message below them that says Newly Revised Re-download.

Thanks for stopping by, have an awesome day!
Paula