Polar Bears

Snow Day #7

The theme today is Polar Bears!

We started with a Polar Bear Pancake Breakfast.

{1 large pancake and 2 small ones for the nose and ears, a grape nose and chocolate chip eyes}

I asked Jillian to put a light dusting of powdered sugar on her polar bear.  Somehow it became more like a SNOW STORM of sugar, but I think she looks quite happy about it!

We have been reading books on polar bears and once again an "Adventures of Riley" book is a huge hit.  We have previously read an 'Adventures of Riley' book during a Penguin themed snow day and the kids loved that one too.  So far they have asked to read this book 5 times!  It has lots of great information and it holds the kids attention.

We also read Ice Bear.  Another great book to learn more about polar bears.

We also checked out a few polar bear videos on you tube.

Click here to watch a video of a polar bear and her two cubs in the wild - my kids love how the mama bear toboggans down the hill.

How do Polar Bears stay warm?

This was an experiment that I was really excited to try with them.  In the above books we were learning how polar bears stay warm in the freezing tempertures.

This experiment shows how the bears thick layer of fat helps to keep the polar bear warm.

1st  Make 'ice bergs' by freezing crumpled up paper cups filled with water - as seen in this post.

2nd  Fill a large bowl with water and 'icebergs'.

3rd  Make a 'blubber glove'.  Put one cup of shortening into a sandwich bag.  Then turn another sandwich bag inside out and put it into the first bag - attach them together so that your hands will not actually touch the shortening.

First the kids first put their hands into the freezing cold 'Arctic water'.

Then they put their hands into the blubber glove and tried again.

Wow!  My hand is not cold anymore!

That's how polar bears stay so warm!

They all had so much fun with this and were amazed by how they could not feel any cold when their hands were inside the glove.  My cute Sarah even suggested that they should make winter gloves out of blubber!

Polar Bear Snack

After the experiment the kids wanted to make a polar bear snack.  They thought of using an apple with marshmallow legs and even thought of putting the goldfish all around for the polar bear to eat!  It was great to watch their creativity!

Puffy Paint Polar Bear

For our polar bear craft I drew out a polar bear shape and gave them a few options of how they could fill it in.  I knew they would pick the puffy paint option - they love this stuff.  We have used it before (here) and the results were really cool.

To make the puffy paint just mix elmers glue and shaving cream!  You could even add some food coloring to it if you wanted some colored puffy paint.

......and here are the Puffy Paint Polar Bears!

And of course, I needed to add a picture of our favorite little

polar bear cub!

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