One of my struggles in kindergarten was always meeting the research standards. Research? Kindergarten? Oh sure, turn them loose on Google, and they can learn all about polar bears. Nothing bad could come of that, right?! That’s how I started creating our research projects. I wanted something kid-friendly and teacher-friendly but developmentally appropriate, engaging, and aligned with the science of reading. That’s easy list to check off, huh?! Our Arctic Animals Research Project is packed with arctic animals activities, art projects and more!
Arctic Animals Kindergarten Research Project
In our class, we study a different animal a day: walruses, arctic foxes, polar bears, moose, narwhals, and snowy owls. We do penguins as a separate unit. To research each arctic animal, we read a book about the animal and watched a YouTube video. We record what we learn on our graphic organizers. The students then write about the animal in their research journal. The research journals are differentiated. One set of pages has a sentence frame, and the other does not. There is also a blank writing page for each animal.
Actic Animals Activities: Labeling And Vocabulary
We also label the parts of animals to teach vocabulary and learn about adaptations explicitly!
This whole group approach to research makes research and writing in kindergarten easy, manageable, and very effective. My students were arctic animal experts at the end of our arctic animals research project.
But we’re not done yet. It’s not just about research and writing…it’s also about FUN and art and snacks! Did we mention fun? So we do lots of arctic animal crafts and art projects!
Arctic Animals Art Projects
The artic fox is a paper plate and white tissue paper squares. The plate is cut in half. One-half of the plate is the body. The other half is used to make the head, legs, and tail.
The polar bear was a simple, directed drawing!
We also do fingerprint polar bears. The students draw the polar bear and use their fingerprints to fill in the polar bear.
The snowy owl is a torn paper project. We first put the brown branch on the paper. Then, we used a white crayon to draw our owl. The Kids filled in the snowy owl with torn white construction paper. We added eyes, ears, and a beak.
Another snowy owl project used styrofoam cups! We used a black crayon to draw feathers. Then we added construction paper details and white feathers for wings!
We also did a narwhal-directed drawing!
The walrus turned into a math lesson and art project. We made the walrus using construction paper. Then we fed the walrus some fish. The students glued some fish onto the paper, and we practiced subtraction by “feeding” the walrus some fish! Math and art and science and research and writing, OH MY! See how we learned all about walruses, did art, and had fun?!
Of course, if you’re learning about arctic animals, you must dress the part!
Arctic Animals: Science Lessons
The students also got to experience what it’s like to live in the arctic and have blubber! We dipped our hands in ice water and talked about how it felt. Then we learned that blubber is a layer of fat that keeps arctic animals warm. So we put our hands into a bag of Crisco (blubber) and then placed our hands in the ice water. We talked about how it was warmer with blubber!
Arctic Animal Activities: Snack Idea
And, of course, we had an arctic animal snack! Polar bear ice cream! Vanilla ice cream cup, vanilla wafer cookies, and chocolate chips!
Arctic Animals Books
Click the image to see our books on Amazon!
YouTube Videos For Arctic Animals:
Our arctic animals research project contains everything you need to research eight different arctic animals. Included are: arctic fox, polar bear, walrus, snowy owl, narwhals, seal, moose, and arctic hare.
Arctic Animals Freebies!
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