After lunch we worked on our Alaska/Iditarod study again. This is our last week of this unit study. Next week we go to Missouri for Spring Break and when we return we'll be studying Hawaii (fun! I just picked up some books at the library today!).
So, today we talked about what keeps some arctic animals warm in such cold temperatures. To illustrate the usefulness of a layer of blubber, we made a blubber/crisco mitten. It was pretty fun for the kids to see the difference their layer of blubber made.
Here's Alex trying out the hand with the mitten... (the sink was full of ice water - I ended up dumping our entire tray of ice from the ice maker in there)
This is Alex pulling his unmittened hand out before it froze :-)
(if you're wondering why Clara is holding a bag of rubber bands in the photo above... well, your guess is as good as mine)Clara takes a turn...
I guess these are out of sequence because we actually read this book first and we even actually read it right before we took a break for lunch...
Togo by Robert J. Blake
I have to say that this was by far one of my favorite books we read during our Iditarod study. This one I definitely had to stop a few times to compose myself before I could continue reading. I really enjoy finding good picture books with good solid information. Not fluffy simplified books where bad things are really glossed over. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a graphic, disturbing book... but it sure doesn't gloss over the hardships they went through either. It seemed to be the perfect mix for my two... enough detail for them to appreciate what it took for the teams to get to Nome but not so much that it upset them.
I think tomorrow we'll study the Northern Lights!
1 comment:
Togo makes me cry every time I read it. What an incredible story, beautifully told and illustrated. And we did our northern lights watercolours the other day--they turned out really cool! Have fun!
Post a Comment