Weeks 33-34 Antarctica

[Marie]

Weeks 33-34
Antarctica


Additional ideas might be located on other boards:
Kindergarten / Penguin: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=35

[lmjmann]

Here is a web site with many links for Antarctica and the Arctic.
http://members.aol.com/bowermanb/antarctica.html

[mamax3]

http://iceflo.icess.ucsb.edu:8080/ice_hp.php?

Wanted to pass along this link that was given to me by a friend.

[Julie in MN]

1. There is a Venn diagram to print out at:
www.themasterplanner.com/mp-venn.pdf
Also: http://highland.hitcho.com.au/readingforms.htm

2. I edited our teacher manual (only time this year!):

- Monday under "Geography Activity" 3rd paragraph, Classroom Atlas is p. 104. The 2nd sentence we changed to labeling the continent name, the north pole, the 3 oceans, & we did a key to show that the dotted lines represent ice shelves.

- On the daily grid for Friday (page 148), World Geography is pg. 150.

3. Our extended family went to see The March of the Penguins & ds was able to share many arctic facts (making homeschoolers look good :o) It was a good summer addition, after closing the school year by studying the arctic. The only cautions would be a reference to "millions of years," a mating scene, & several scenes where you knew a penguin would not survive - such as a baby penguin you knew was going to be eaten by a predator. But these types of things were brief & not disruptive for my 9-year-old. Be sure to stay for the scenes during the credits, showing the penguins looking at the cameramen :o)

4. A new YWAM missionary biography about the Arctic is on Wilfred Grenfell (Canada, not Antarctica, but still cold -- gets stuck on an ice pan!). He seems to be popular, with a lot of Google images (& quotes) available.


Museum/house today
http://www.nfcap.nf.ca/west/StAnthony/gren.htm

Him with what looks to be a Canadian baby
And on the tip of a sailboat, it looks like
http://www.iga.nf.net/pressreleases.html

With nurses possibly?
http://www.iga.nf.net/links.html

looks like him frozen with snowshoes & early hospital
http://www.hlc.nf.ca/html/body_history.html
http://www.haythornthwaite.com/GrenHistory.htm

His statue
http://www.atlanticcanada.worldweb.com/ ... -4050.html
http://www.adventureboattours.com/local_attractions.htm

His postage stamp (the one with the cross)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Grenfell


Actually has a recording of his book, Adrift on an Ice Floe. Seems to be him! (under #4, "polar explorers")
http://cylindersontheweb.angelcities.co ... rdings.htm


quotes: http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/wilfred_grenfell/
The service we render others is the rent we pay for our room on earth.
Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.

[LSH in MS]

We found a great book at the library. Polar Explorers for kids Historic Expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic with 21 Activities by Maxine Snowden It covers from Erik the Red to Richard Byrd. You could also check out some books about Ernest Shackelton. We found an easy reader of his story. Their is also his biography called Endurance. Our library had Endurance on CD.

[Debby3]

We found a great book called Ice Story: Shackleton's Lost Expedition by Elizabeth Kimmel. We really enjoyed this. Even though his expedition never reached Antarctica, it kept our attention as the men struggled to survive. There are many character lessons as Shackleton held his crew together. With their emotions on the verge of explosion, he encourages and builds up his men so that all may be brought back alive and none shall perish. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Debby

[Tina]

I am a little late in writing our experiences in Antarctica and our closing of ECC. It was a great study this year and dc were excited at how much they learned.

We did the sugar cube igloos as a craft for Antarctica and we watched the march of the penguins. We did a really neat comparison of the Antarctic and Arctic. Dc both enjoyed making little charts and writing about what they remembered were different between the two. They will never forget that penguins do not live in the Arctic and polar bears do not live in Antarctica.

We enjoyed the review of all the countries at the end. It was neat to see how much each student retained this year.

Now, we wait for CtG. Thank you Hazells for this rich study of countries and cultures.

[Julie in MN]

Tina,
Thank you for being so faithful to share your experiences all year! I have enjoyed reading them & remembering the fun. And we will repeat ECC in a few years, so we appreciate even more great ideas recorded in advance for us :o) Even ds likes to read what the other families have done.

I don't know if this is the right spot to say this, but I thank everyone who has shared on the ECC boards!!!
Julie

[missionsmom]

We found a great movie about penguins at the library. It is called March of the Penguins and is narrated by Morgan Freeman. (I believe it was filmed for IMAX movies.) It is a documentary on penguins and how they mate. They "march" for miles inland to lay their egg and the males endure a terrible winter keeping the egg warm. It was beautifully done and not graphic. I was completely comfortable letting my 8 yo watch it.

[cbollin]

A very silly little story:

Cinderella Penguin, or the Little Glass Flipper, by Janet Perlman.

This is a just a very light hearted, silly version of Cinderella where the characters are all penguins. Drawings are cute and funny. And we laughed out loud the way they figure out where the glass flipper goes.

-crystal

[Mum In Zion]

Am I the only one... I had never heard of the continent Oceania. We were given a new dictionary and it listed it as a continent. Did a very quick search on goggle and found that there are actually 4-7 continents depending on different things. I had heard about Eurasia, but not Oceania.

Praise God that He doesn't change and that He remains the same!

I thought that since I grew up in Australia, I might be able to shed some light on what "we" call Oceania :-)

It isn't a continent, but a region which definitely includes all the small island groups in the Pacific, such as Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. Sometimes it also includes Australia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.

The boundaries seem to change depending on what you are looking at in the region.

However, I haven't lived there for the last 10 years, so they may have changed the definition since I was at school :-)

Blessings,
Michelle

[RachelT]

Wow! We have completed our 34 weeks of ECC curriculum! My children have been fascinated with penguins for a few years so this was a fun study for us to end the year with.

We read the Magic Tree House book, Eve of the Emperor Penguin and are still finishing up Mr. Popper's Penguins.
We also used a Venn Diagram out of back of the Primary Language Lessons TM that I have for comparing the North and South poles.

We made the cute little penguins with cotton ball tummies out of the Another Trip Around the World book.

[TriciaMR]

We are starting Antarctica on Monday and I plan to have the dc do the Ice Sculpture project from the Global Art book. I have the sugar cubes but I was wondering if anyone has substituted the hard drying icing with something else. I'm just feeling a bit lazy and don't really want to make the icing.

Could I use regular frosting in a can or school glue? I know the frosting won't harden but it's basically just to glue them together. Would the school glue react with the sugar and melt it or something? I would only want them to stay together long enough to take a picture of their creations for their notebooks.

We didn't do that project in ECC, but I can tell you when we built the pyramids with sugar cubes in CTG, the white school glue did NOT hold the cubes together. But, that was us...

Other ideas that might work:

toothpaste
frosting in a can (maybe, ours never hardens)
maybe some of those "icing" options at the store
what about some Crisco?
Peanut butter

-Trish

[jasntas]

do you have a way to get Marshmallow creme at the store this morning? (or slightly melted marshmallows like for rice krispie treats?)
I think that might work for edible glue for this project based on how my youngest daughter likes to make "marshmallow sheep" from time to time. it holds the mini m and m's in place long enough.??

That sounds way too sticky and I can just see my two wanting to eat their creations and then bouncing off the walls. I think the same might happen if we used peanut butter, too Love the suggestions and the word pictures the ideas provoked though.

I don't have anything to add about the project, but all the talk of sugar made me smile. Last night in her prayer my youngest said, "Dear God, thank you for making sugar. That was such a good idea!"

Too *sweet*! I love a child's prayer.

My two are currently working on their 'penguin outposts' as they have been dubbed. (My ds said there are no igloos in Antarctica so he called his an outpost.)

Thanks for the cute story

The canned frosting seems to be working fine. They are calling me now to come and see their creations.

[jasntas]

I just wanted to post a heads up that I didn't see in the TM for a project out of the World Geography book listed for this week.

Week 33
Thursday
Science
World Geography
p 150 Glacier Experiment

* Omit the first paragraph from the World Geography book. It starts 'Millions of years... ' *

HTH

*** Edit to add -- This is in the 2nd edition TM.

*** Second edit to add. The following is how our experiment went.

I froze some of our 'sand' from a previous experiment and water in a Taco Bell cup since I didn't have a small milk carton and we made a mound of dirt for our 'mountain' in an unfinished corner of our back yard. Our first glacier was, well, knocked off our 'mountain'. I found puppy prints on the 'mountain' and the glacier lying nearby. I think our new Cocker Spaniel pup got thirsty. The second attempt went better and resulted in a debris field of broken shells and rock. I thought it would have dug more of a path but it was still more successful than our first attempt.

Before

Glacier before melted.jpg (64.67 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

After

Glacier after melted.jpg (81.66 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

[jasntas]

During our Antarctica reading we used toy penguins I purchased in one of those 'Toobs' you find at Michael's and two Penguins books to see if we could identify the different penguins that came in the Toob. The books were Penguins! by Gail Gibbins and Penguins by Derek Hastings. The kids really enjoyed this activity. (I did leave out the page in the Gail Gibbins book about evolution during my reading.) I didn't read the text in the picture book so I can't comment on the content but the pictures were beautiful.

My dc also made ice sculptures with sugar cubes and instead of glue white frosting. My ds said he couldn't make an igloo because there are no igloos in Antarctica so he dubbed his an outpost. They both added the Toob penguin toys to their sculptures and their sculptures became penguin outposts. My dd also added frosting 'snow' to her penguins.

Justin's Penguin Outpost 2011.jpg (35.41 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

Carissa's Penguin Outpost 2011.jpg (39.73 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

I also purchased inexpensive wooden penguins from Michael's that they painted.

painted penguins.jpg (46.49 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

[Julie in MN]

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World,
by Jennifer Armstrong

This is about the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole. They didn't make it to the pole, but all men in the party survived 1.5 years of extreme conditions. My son's boys' book club gave Shackleton high marks for being an excellent leader, and the book gives details of specific leadership decisions made along the way. It is not necessarily a Christian story, but there are some events that point in that direction, such as the page saved from the Bible when they were leaving everything they could behind (e.g. even leaving their money).

There are many books about this expedition, from those written by the actual men to fictional accounts of the (real) stowaway on board. This particular volume (Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World) is very readable, has tons of photos (there was a photographer on board), and includes a lot of Antarctica information about ocean currents, types of ice, geography (including a map), the longer/shorter daylight, the Southern Hemisphere seasons, the temperature ranges, and the animals.

My son read this in 10th grade, but there are some 8th graders in the group. I also found the book fascinating, as an adult, and the length was do-able for a busy homeschool mom

The boys then watched the IMAX film, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (playing at our Science Museum, but also available on Netflix DVD etc). My son felt the film was good, but he was disappointed that it was more of a documentary than a story -- he felt the Shipwreck book would be such a great story on film! (I think we'll look around for more story-like films, as I know there is something out there.)

[Mommy22alyns]

On the suggestion of someone from the FB group, I read Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World and found it fascinating. I don't think the girls are quite ready for it though.[2nd and 4th grades] I'm also almost done with Into Thin Air, again, riveting.