Arctic Animals Winter Sports The Olympics and a Bit of Engineering
I've been going to a lot of professional development meetings this year about the power of an integrated curriculum and it seems there's a lot of teachers who are integrating arctic animals and winter sports into their classrooms. How fun is that! During our latest meeting we visited a classroom where the teacher presented a lesson in which she taught the students about how the characteristics of a penguin make them uniquely suited to their environments. To illustrate this she showed the students the following YouTube video to help them see how penguins toboggan in order to move quickly over the snow. She then compared the penguin tobogganing to Olympic skeleton racers, who also speed downhill at incredible speeds on their bellies. What a powerful lesson with so many jumping off points for curriculum instruction!
I was immediately inspired to take this lesson one step further and add in an engineering challenge for my own students. I went directly to Amazon (you can find the products below with our affiliate link), and found some mini plastic penguins and fingerboards. When they arrived, I grabbed some cardboard tubes and prepared for some Penguin Races!
Here are my son and I testing out the lesson. Who will win the Penguin Race? A penguin on his belly? The "skeleton racer" skateboard? Or, a penguin on a skeleton board? My son made some interesting observations while we were racing penguins. For example, he tried to reduce the incline of the ramp but immediately realized that the ramps became too weak at the midpoint and needed added support. We also tried adding tin foil to the ramps to make them look like snowy hills, but he quickly told me that we needed to take it off because "It's slowing the penguins down because it's too bumpy." I'm so excited to take this experiment into the classroom and see what my students come up with!
Are you looking for more integrated curriculum ideas? Theses Winter Olympics and Arctic Animal units are filled with ideas for curriculum integration!
Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Product Description
Winter Sports Thematic Unit! Are you and your classroom or homeschool students fans of Winter Sports? This Thematic Unit is packed with fun, engaging activities that are strategically linked to academic Core Standards. Let the Winter Sports begin!
Contents Include:
Literacy Games
Bobsled Raceway: Reading Sight Word Sentences (or Alphabet Letters)
At the Sports Event: Naming Sounds or Reading Nonsense Words
Hockey Shot: Segmenting Words into Phonemes
Winter Sports: Writing Sight Words (or Alphabet Letters)
Literacy Worksheets
Winter Sports: Reading and Matching Color Words
Winter Sports Medal Match: Distinguishing Between Two Similar Words
Math Games
Ski Jump Addition: Adding Two Numbers
Medal Count: Graphing Medals
Winter Sports: Decomposing Numbers
Going For the Gold: Teen Numbers
Math Worksheets
Roll To Color: Creating Sums
Half Pipe Hype: Comparing Two Written Numerals
Writing
Winter Sports Word Wall
Writing Prompts: Winter Sports
Label the Sports
My List of Winter Sports
Guided Reading Book
Winter Sports (Level B and Level D versions)
Art Activities
Winter Sports Windsock
Winter Sports Medal
Winter Sports Torch
Gym or PE Activity
Winter Sports Challenge
Winter Indépendant Writing Center Activities
Winter Sport Reading Intervention Games
Winter Guided Sight Word Readers Set 1
Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Product Description
Arctic and Antarctic Regions Thematic Unit.
You will love this unit as you and your classroom or homeschool students learn about the Polar Animals that live in Arctic or Antarctic Regions such as penguins, polar bears, walrus and more?
Teach the academic Core Standards with confidence by using these strategically linked cross-curricular, thematic activities. You and your students will love them! They are classroom tested with perfect results!
Contents include:
Shared Reading Activities:
The Whale & The Penguin: Group Poetry Activity
Arctic Friends: Retell a Story
Literacy Activities
Glacier Bay: Phoneme Segmentation
Glacier Melt Down: Fluently Naming Alphabet Sounds
March of the Penguins: Alphabet Letter Fluency
Arctic Hunt: Nonsense Word Fluency
Walrus Waddle & Walk: Writing Beginning Sounds
Igloo Match: Matching Upper and Lowercase Letters
Arctic Animal Names: Writing Missing Letters
Math Activities:
Polar Bears in the Cave: Counting On
Penguin Playground: Adding to and Taking Away
Inuit Count: Joining Sets
Rescuing Penguins: Identifying Teen Numbers
Polar Bear Fishing: Comparing Quantities
Comparing Igloos: Comparing Written Numerals
Inuit Friends: Composing Numbers
Writing Prompts/Word Wall
Arctic Word Wall
The Penguins
Polar Animals
Label It
Guided Reading Books
Arctic Friends
Class Made Book
Arctic Friends
Art Projects
Walrus
My Inuit Friend
Penguin
Science
Ice Race: Exploring Properties of Water
North Pole Facts?South Pole Facts
Blubber Experiment:How Polar Animals Keep Warm
Songs
North and South
Arctic Friends
© Kathy Crane Kindergarten Kiosk
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