Animals in Winter

This week we are learning where the animals go in the Winter.

Do they Hibernate, Migrate or Adapt? This sorting activity is from itsy bitsy learners. We also used our animal photos to find the homes (caves, burrows, trees etc.) that animals lived in the Winter. I forgot to take pictures of that. ;)

Hibernation game to help with number recognition. Sorry no link on this, I made it using clip art & a few other programs I have.  

We went ice fishing for numbers & letters. I ran out of time, but was going to make a box that B actually had to 'fish' through and make it white like ice; but he enjoyed it this way too. 

Polar animal patterns

Polar animal footprint matching game. You can find all the polar animal activities here.

Our creative art this week was super fun and simple. We made porcupines with playdoh & toothpicks. This was all B's work...I only supervised, isn't he cute! I did show him a photo of real porcupine and we talked about the animal, he was very interested in the quills.

Another free form art activity was painting with white paint on black construction paper, the simply gluing google eyes to it. Afterwards I asked him what animal he had painted he picked porcupine. I think I can see the quills. This is a great way to demonstrate abstract art.

Science experiment - how do animals keep warm when it's cold out? We felt an ice cube & talked about how cold it would be to live on ice/snow. B says 'we couldn't do that we'd freeze, we need warm clothes.' Then we felt a baggie with shortening in it. It was warm and thick. We talked about how animals had blubber just like this that helps keep them warm.

Then we saw what happened when we held the 'blubber' and put the ice on it. Did we feel the cold or was it warm? This was such a simple experiment; B is still talking about it.

Begins with Polar animals clip cards.

Our book this week was The Mitten;

it's about animals that try to make a mitten their home...all squeezing together. I found these cute print outs on janbrett, we used them as an interactive story by putting them on Popsicle sticks.

Do you have any fun activities about hibernation?