Friday, February 1, 2013

Thinking Thursdays: Learning about polar animals (II)


So aside from those polar animal activities that I shared in the last post, Junior J also got to work his counting (using a penguin puzzle from here, which counts from 31-40), as well as the roll and graph activity from here (which got him so excited he threw the dice so many times that it split open!)

Activities aside, we read a couple of books on the Arctic and Antarctic:


:: North: The Amazing Story of Arctic Migration, by Nick Dowson
This was my favourite book of the lot. Stunning illustrations outline the migration of many animals as they head their way to the Arctic for the summer. I learnt quite a bit myself from reading this book to Junior J, and we loved pouring over the pictures. We'll probably be revisiting this book again for another thematic study!

:: Pipaluk and the Whales, by John Himmelman
We didn't manage to read this over here, but borrowed it from the library previously when we were back in SG. This story is based on a true incident where thousands of beluga whales were found by Russian villagers trapped in ice.  The villagers helped to keep the hole open for the whales, and eventually the whales were rescued when an ice-breaker cut a channel to the sea, and led them out by playing classical music!

:: Polar Bear, Arctic Hare, by Eileen Spinelli
This book introduces the many creatures that can be found in the Arctic through poetry, which I thought was a nice change from reading prose.

:: How Big is a Million?, by Anna Milbourne
Ok, this wasn't so much about polar animals, but I included it because there were seals and penguins! We revisited this book as Junior J loves reading about Pipkin the penguin, who tries to find out how big a million really is. Its quite a good book for introducing large numbers like hundreds and thousands.

:: Little Cliff and the Cold Place, by Clifton Taulbert
Little Cliff learns about the Arctic and wants to go there. Read about how his father manages to bring the Arctic to Cliff instead!

Do you have any favourite reads on polar lands? Have a blessed weekend, and we'll be back next week to share about what we were learning about Chinese New Year!

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this lovely list of books! I'm going to check them out when we have a polar theme too! Incidently the very very first book I ever read to Poppy was Big Bear Little Bear (http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bear-Little-David-Bedford/dp/1854307096) and it's a beautiful story about a mum polar bear and her baby. I just read it and cried cos it was about baby wanting to be big and grow up fast, and mum saying "you're perfect just the way you are". I just had to cry cos already, at just a couple of months, I felt Poppy was growing too fast! It's a gorgeous book; I hope you can get your hands on it :)

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