Arctic Adventure - Classroom Transformation

Since we have been learning about the Arctic, I decided to transform our classroom into an Arctic Adventure today.

I decorated my classroom the night before with some items that I picked up at Dollar Tree and Deans Party Mania, which is basically our version of Party City.

I covered each of the desks and tables with white tablecloths and then spread plastic, from the paint section, on the floor to represent ice floes. I also picked up some snowflake confetti and sparkly plastic confetti to sprinkle on the tables.

I attached snowflake décor to my lanterns that I have hanging from my ceiling.

For my door, I taped on a light blue table cloth and decorated it with snowflakes from the party store. I also found this sparkly door decoration at Dollar Tree.

I hung up a light blue table cloth on our dry erase board and attached this felt icicle decoration along the top.

I gave each student a bottle of “melted snow” to have for the day. You can download the water bottle cover HERE.

Prior to the students coming in, I turned on this Arctic sounds video and projected the picture on my screen.

What did we do during our Arctic Day?

We have been using my Print & Teach Arctic Animals packet all week to learn about animals in the Arctic. For our morning work, we completed the Arctic Animal Word Search from this packet.

Then, we rotated through four Arctic stations.

1. Constructing Marshmallow Igloos

I purchased the larger marshmallows for this activity. The students could work together or on their own to create igloos with the marshmallows.

2. Snowball Structures

I purchased bags of small marshmallows and toothpicks for students to create snowball structures.

3. Q-tip Snowflakes

The students created snowflakes using Q-tips at the third station.

4. Snowball Coding

The students completed this Snowball Coding Activity from Teach Outside the Box.

While the students were working at their stations, I had one student at a time come to me to complete the Blubber Experiment. I placed vegetable shortening in a large bag. The student put on a latex glove and placed their hand in the shortening. Then, they placed their hand in ice water to demonstrate how blubber keeps arctic animals warm.

Later on in the day, we had a snowball throwing contest. I gave each students a cotton ball. They each took turns throwing the ball and then measuring how far they threw it.

Since we have been learning about place value and how to use Base-10 blocks, I incorporated that into our day. I gave students straws and marshmallows. These became icicles and snowballs. The students had to make numbers with their icicles and snowballs just like they would with Base-10 blocks.

We practiced spelling words and math facts with shaving cream (snow) on our desks.

We also used passages from my new Winter Edition of Reading on the Move. The students read the passage, roll the dice, and then complete the “winter themed” movement before reading again.