Arctic Foxes, Water Beads and Bingo

The last polar animal we learned about was the arctic fox. We learned how they are brown in the summer and white in the winter. So we started with brown foxes. I found a coloring sheet I liked, printed it on brown construction paper and cut out the fox. (I used this one.) The kids glued the brown fox to white paper, for a "snowy" background.

Then they used a glue stick to cover their fox with cotton balls so it would blend in with the background.

They stretched and peeled apart the cotton balls before gluing them on. And boy, was it a sticky situation!

But they loved it.

I also want to share with you a couple things we had going on this week. In the sensory bin I put blue water beads in a small container and filled the rest of the bin with clear water beads. The blue is the water, the clear is ice and snow. Then I put in some polar animals.

Of course, after I bought the clear water beads, I learned about square water beads from a few other bloggers. That would have worked better for the ice.

And I also made Polar Bingo for the kids. I found this great site where you can make cards with pictures on them. I printed several copies of the cards and put them in groups of 8 onto paper. Then I laminated them.

I printed out another set from which the kids would pick, and also laminated those.

I set out our counting bears to use as markers. The kids took turns picking a card and if either of them had it on their Bingo card, they covered it with a bear.

It really was a lot of fun and I think I might visit that site again and again to make different things for my classroom! It's free!

Fun Fact: Arctic foxes have a great sense of hearing. If they hear an animal under the snow, they will leap up and pounce, thus breaking the snow right where the prey is.