As we take a break from the series of blogs about areas in the classroom, we’ll have some fun with penguins, snow and ice.

Since returning to school in January, we have seen some very warm days and some very cold days! This week I’ll share some ideas that help us love the cold!

Young children learn best with hands on activities. This time of year in the Northeast is a great time for outside science explorations.

 Who loves an ice hunt? We do. Young children love stumbling upon interesting or puzzling frozen things. Water that has frozen is like a treasure! They delight in a pinecone or other object frozen in an ice chunk.  You can seed these discoveries by putting some water out in containers and adding some leaves or pine cones for your preschooler to discover at recess time. Catch snowflakes on a dark piece of paper and observe them with a magnifying glass. Will you find two that look alike? 

If it is not cold enough outside, use the freezer to compliment your ice studies inside. We froze some water in ice cube trays and bowls for our penguin habitat play.  If you have access to snow, bring it inside in a tub. Preschoolers delight in both water and ice studies, you can have both as the ice melts! Let them discover the properties of water and ice through their own exploration and discovery.  If you are worried about cold hands, provide a few sets of mittens.

 Have fun with language arts by using arctic vocabulary. There are many ways to say “cold”. When talking about arctic animals, don’t forget to use words like habitat, blubber (layer of fat), paddle, rookeries (big noisy group), chick, predator, hibernate and molt as a few key words. Write and tell stories about animals living in a cold environment.

Social studies may include an introduction to the life style of families that live in igloos and have sled dogs and how they cope with very cold regions.

Match little toy penguins with ice cubes, (real or paper) to practice rote counting and one to one correspondence.  These types of math activities make learning fun!

There are many arts and craft activities that revolve around penguins, ice and cold. I will list a few that are fun for young children as a jumping off point for you. Polar bear or penguin paper bag puppets, toilet paper roll penguins, frozen birdseed or cranberries molds to hang out for the birds, cotton ball, sugar cube or mini marshmallow igloos, and frozen paint cube paintings are all fun and easy to do!

Large motor activity can include waddle and belly slide (toboggan) like a penguin or fish and jump from ice flow to ice flow like a polar bear.

Stay warm, next week we will explore the science area in the nursery school setting.

Soon we will post Friendship Garden Nursery School fun and educational activities on Pinterest. You can start following us now at http://www.pinterest.com/funwithfgns/