Polar Animal Inquiry

Learning about polar animals is always a favorite in January.  I love helping students learn that some of the animals they thought may have lived together actually live in different parts of the world. When doing research, I always like to start by allowing them to browse a non-fiction books about the topic to spark their interest and help them get ready to ask questions.  

Then, we sorted arctic and an arctic animals. This gives me some nice information about prior knowledge and student interest.  (Check out Simply Kinder's website for some Kindergarten ready videos) I find that while my students may not have strong background knowledge for this topic, once they see the videos, they are always excited to learn more. We also completed a “I see, I think, I wonder” chart.  This year, my students were super interested in penguins and fascinated by the narwhal.  

The kids always want to know how the animals stay warm in the cold waters.  The classic blubber glove experiment is a great science experiment to help kids through the scientific process. It is so great to see their hypotheses and then construct their own knowledge from the experiment.  Usually, kids think animals just have thick fur. We always take a look at walruses and wonder what they do because they don’t have fur like a polar bear.  The kids put their hands in the water with ice (this year I added some arctic animals from the Safari Toob) to see what that felt like.  Then, they tried the blubber glove and were amazed at the difference.  We used the left over water to grow our water beads and then put the animals from our experiment into the water beads. 

We also made these cute polar bear cups.  You will need ice cream cups, chocolate chips, and mini Nilla Wafers. 

During our literacy workstations, the students were able to use “snow” playdough, the Toob animals, and glass pebbles (from Michaels) on a mirror to tell stories. They also used the water beads for storytelling as well. The kids helped decide to split our water beads in half so that one tub could be Arctic animals and the other could be Antarctic animals. We could NOT mix the two...lol! These non-fiction books were in Chick-fil-a kids meals last year.  A student brought them in to share with the class.

Two of my favorite fiction books to read during this unit are “The Three Snow Bears” by Jan Brett and “Dear Polar Bear”.  “The Three Snow Bears” is an arctic version of “The Three Little Bears” and great for retelling or acting out.  “Dear Polar Bear” is a book about a lonely polar bear who writes letters to his bear friends around the world and a penguin postman who delivers them.  The best part about this book is a map in the beginning of the book that shows how the penguin traveled to each part of the world to deliver the letters.  

Click on the picture to go to Jan Brett's website

Click on the picture to go to Amazon to check out the book

The last part of our inquiry was about penguins.  We watched a penguin video from Scholastic News and read a non-fiction book about penguins. We learned that emperor penguins are 4 ft tall so we use a tape measure to draw an emperor penguin to scale on butcher paper.  Then, we stood next to the penguins to see how tall we were compared to a penguin. Then we learned how penguins kept their eggs in their feet so we used a ball to practice walking with an egg.  This brought about lots of laughs.  Then we huddled together for warmth.  

We ended the unit with a stem challenge. I froze the Toob animals in small mason jars. The kids were presented with the problem: Your animals are stuck in the ice.  You only have salt, a plastic spoon, and a plastic knife.  How will you get the animals out of the ice?

Happy Teaching!