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Polar Regions


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Hi

I hope someone can help, after the Christmas Hols. I'm going to do a mini topic on ice which I am hoping will led onto the polar regions. I have never taught this before and spent most of yesterday trying to find information and activities-not having much luck with activities. I'm going to set up a small world in the tuff spot to cover The Artic with polar bears, fake snow, etc. And i'm hoping to get an igloo from Ikea for role play. I will place large ice blocks and penguins in the water tray to represent Antarctica but I'm struggling with other areas of the class room-I'm going to get lots of knowledge and understanding, but need something to cover PSRN, CD, CLL & PD.

Hope someone can help.

If anyone has already done this as a topic, would you mind sending me a copy of activities you used?

Thank you.

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we are doing Snow and ice next half term - filling plastic sweets trays with water to make ice , watching it melt , touching feeling , hot and cold , dressing for the weather, animal s in cold environments - using globe and maps - adding objects to water and freezing , all of these cover the 6 areas , looking and creating patterns for snowflakes , making snowflakes , scissor skills , creative dev- using semolina and glue , it goes on and on -hope this is of some help

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We made Ice Pictures - we gave each child a foil container (like the ones you get dog/cat food in) - they filled them with different things like beads, sequins, buttons, glitter as well as natural materials such as leaves, small sticks, feathers. We laid a piece of string on top and filled them with water. We then put them outside to freeze. Once frozen they were easy to pop out of the foil containers and we hung them up outside. They looked lovely and when the sun began to shine we watched them melt.

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Last week I saw the most amazing igloo in a setting :o

It was made out of 2pt plastic milk containers and was just amazing.

 

The containers were put on their side and and stuck together. The 'piles' of milk bottles curved slightly and then these were stuck side by side and round in an igloo shape leaving an opening at the front.

 

I so wish I could have taken a picture. Inside the igloo all the different colour bottle tops looked amazing. Red, blue, green and purple. Some of the lids were stuck on and others left so the children could unscrew them. The outside had been given a liberal sprinkling of glitter.

 

I am now saving my milk cartons.... xD:(

Edited to say I have just googled milk carton igloo images and found these.

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post-1999-1324295436_thumb.jpg

Edited by Gezabel
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Last week I saw the most amazing igloo in a setting :o

It was made out of 2pt plastic milk containers and was just amazing.

 

The containers were put on their side and and stuck together. The 'piles' of milk bottles curved slightly and then these were stuck side by side and round in an igloo shape leaving an opening at the front.

 

I so wish I could have taken a picture. Inside the igloo all the different colour bottle tops looked amazing. Red, blue, green and purple. Some of the lids were stuck on and others left so the children could unscrew them. The outside had been given a liberal sprinkling of glitter.

 

I am now saving my milk cartons.... xD:(

Edited to say I have just googled milk carton igloo images and found these.

 

fabulous - I wonder what you stick them together with?

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Made a milk bottle igloo 3 years ago as part of a childs interest in house building and I can tell you categorically that a glue gun DOES NOT work. I ended up buying 3 rolls of the sticky tape used to stick carpet down with at a cost of £60 to eventually get it to stay together. It was brilliant once done and taking it down was even more fun as the children created large expanses of flattened milk bottles by stamping and jumping on them.

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but need something to cover PSRN, CD, CLL & PD.

 

But do you? The pervasive sense (in school settings mostly, in y experience), that everything must come from one theme is, in my opinion, an arbitrary self imposed straitjacket!!!

Why does it all have to be rooted in the one context? If it doesn't "fit" particularly, I think that ends up with lots of contrived doing and not necessarily actual next steps learning to be honest.

 

What are the skills the children need to develop next from your assessments? If you define that first then I find the context to do it in will be clearer to plan for, rather than the other way round of starting with the context and then trying to squeeze everything in to it.

 

Cx

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What are the skills the children need to develop next from your assessments? If you define that first then I find the context to do it in will be clearer to plan for, rather than the other way round of starting with the context and then trying to squeeze everything in to it.

 

Cx

 

I heartily agree with you Catma! I find if I plan a theme the children go off on their tangent of interest anyway and the planning goes out of the window. Even doing all the lovely Christmassy things that they initially asked to do (Which encompassed a great deal of wanted 'next steps') we slipped into exploring magnets for a few days and melting ice cubes in various places etc and it would have been oh so easy to go off on a different track! Normally, that's exactly what I'd have done but in the last week before Christmas we decided to leave the exploring of those things till the new year.

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It's the flexibilty to make those decisions I value most - I get really disheartened when practitioners say "I can't do that because we're doing x or y" as if every child must leave the EYFS having "done" dinosaurs or transport or whatever.

 

I'm not against themes or topics but only if they are a vehicle for developing identified gaps/skills that are needed to move children on towards the ELGs not the actual driver.

 

Cx

Edited by catma
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I heartily agree with you Catma! I find if I plan a theme the children go off on their tangent of interest anyway and the planning goes out of the window.

 

That's so true! The last couple of days a group of my boys have been loading boxes with books, bags, dressing up clothes and blankets and taking them to the bench (like a park bench) behind the classroom. I couldn't work out what they were doing but eventually it turned out they were playing 'holidays' they've been to the airport, then Spain then it was a camper van and they were going all over the place including to school. It's the first time I've seen this group of boys really involved in any kind of role play and I'm just wondering if the interest will be strong enough to turn my role play area into some kind of holiday related 'place'. It doesn't directly link with my main topic of caves but who cares - if it's got those three interested in something other than chasing, playing 'dob' or guns I'm going with it!

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I totally agree - the winter theme has come from the children and as we needed a little more time we planned it to be something to be excited about when we come back - the suggestion of the igloo drew gasps of wow! as for our theme - we plan out where we think we will go next but they decide where we go next!

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