When life hands you ice....
.... Do ice painting, of course!! If there is one thing Antarctica has more of than penguins, it's ice. A layer of ice permanently covers 95% of the continent and can reach a thickness of a mile. So you'd think that the only color as far as the eye could see would be white, right? Actually, the ice reflects the sky and beautifully creates shades of blue that are amazing.
The water runoff when the ice melts, and the surrounding seas are so pure and clean that the water is the clearest shade of blue you'll see. Cold, but beautiful.
So we made a project.
Antarctic Ice Painting
For the project you will need:
- ice cube trays or small disposable cups
- water
- blue food coloring
- white paper
- toothpicks
- cling wrap or foil
1. Pour the water into the ice cube trays (or small disposable cups) and add a small amount of blue food coloring to the water to make various shades of blue. So pretty.
2. Cover the tray with wrap and poke toothpicks through for handles.
3. Put into freezer. Wait, wait, wait.
4. When properly frozen, use the ice to paint all over the paper to make beautiful shades of blue. We went through a few sheets of paper just painting and then I drew an orca so we had an underwater scene to paint.
This is a very relaxing painting activity that would be great on a hot day or with different colors to show color mixing. Clean up is easy and leftover "paint" can be used to cool off your drink :)
Cheers to Antarctica!
Don't Break the Ice!
We were playing around today and rediscovered a game we haven't played in a few months. Coincidentally, it matched our theme of Antarctica so we thought we'd share it with you.
It's called Don't Break the Ice and is pretty fun and easy for all ages, although a grown up (or patient kid) will probably need to set it up. It features blocks of "ice" held by tension in a square rack. There is one large square that holds a figure of an ice-skating polar bear that you DON'T want to let fall as you knock out the surrounding blocks of ice one by one. Since there are no polar bears in Antarctica (they are in the Artic) we subbed a small stuffed penguin. We found another stuffed penguin who we let observe :)
It's a fun game and, if you can stand the noise of the little hammer tap-tap-tapping the ice, the kids will enjoy setting up different configurations and seeing how much of the ice they can chip away before it all goes crashing down!!
Fun times! Well maybe not for the penguin!
Another fun Antarctica themed idea would be to rent Happy Feet. It's a cute little movie about a young penguin who feels he just doesn't belong. He goes on a quest to find himself and ends up saving the whole penguin colony. It gets a little into the overfishing and illegal poaching that goes on in the Antarctic region and the leopard seals (and other penguin eating animals) are a bit frightening in some scenes, but, overall, it's a pretty good movie that would make a good platform for teaching about Antarctica and the animals that live there. Click here for a small clip from the movie.
The Ice Continent
So we have spent almost an entire year (!) learning about a different country each week, yet we left out an entire continent!! Well, we are going to remedy that this week, we are studying Antarctica!!
The continent of Antarctica is the windiest, driest, coldest, highest and emptiest place on the earth. It doesn't really qualify as a country because no one lives there and there is no government or capital, language or culture. So what is there?
Actually, there's a lot going on. There are numerous scientists and explorers doing experiments on wind, cold, the animal life, astronomy, etc. etc. There are 21 different species of penguins that can be found on or around the 5.4 million square miles that make up the vast continent. Over 95% of that land is covered by ice, some of that ice is over a mile deep. 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the freshwater is held here.
There are no land mammals or native people on Antarctica. But around 50 million (give or take) years ago, the region had a temperate climate and forests and animals. Those fossils are somewhere underneath that ice! Think of all the cool new scientific finds just waiting to be discovered!!
The waters surrounding Antarctica are full of interesting creatures - there are numerous seals, whales, sea birds, and fish all feeding on the billions of krill (or the fish that eat the krill) that live in the COLD water! These teeny tiny little crustaceans are perhaps the most important creature in the Antarctic seas.
So, what I thought was going to be a boring region is actually a pretty amazing place. Hope you join our exploration!
Beautiful isn't it?
4. When properly frozen, use the ice to paint all over the paper to make beautiful shades of blue. We went through a few sheets of paper just painting and then I drew an orca so we had an underwater scene to paint.
