Welcome to our collection of Awe-Inspiring Arctic Animals – a collection of relaxed and fun activities for winter-themed learning plans, snowed in days, or just plan learning fun! For this day, we learned a bit about narwhals! We read some books about these unicorns of the sea, watched a few videos online, created and snacked on our edible narwhal habitats, and performed a science experiment. Read on to check out the fun!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
While narwhals may not be the most commonly known sea creature, there are still plenty of fun and educational videos out there! For our videos of the day, we watched a few short ones that described narwhals, their habitats, and more!
- NatGeoWild: Narwhals: The Unicorn of the Sea
- WildKratts: Narwhals in the Arctic
- WildKratts S12E05: Mystery of the Two Horned Narwhal
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
For our snack of the day, we created a “habitat” for our narwhal figurine using blue plates and the insides of apples for the igloos. We also had some blue colored fruit (blueberries, blackberries, etc) sprinkled around the plate! Though they couldn’t eat the narwhal figurine, they had fun setting up a mini habitat for it 🙂 Setting up the snack was almost as fun as eating it 🙂
READING
Reading is not just an important part of learning, it can also be fun if you pick the right books and theme! For our book of the day, we picked: Narwhals (A Day in the Life: Polar Animals).
If your kiddos are a bit older, they may also like the Narwhal and Jelly series – it’s fiction and is more of a comic book type book, but definitely a humorous page turner for those fans.
- Narwhals (A Day in the Life: Polar Animals) by Katie Marisco
- Narwhal and Jelly Books by Ben Clanton
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to practice both their creative skills as well as their writing and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: NARWHAL, WHALE, ARCTIC, SWIM…
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. Our writing prompt of the day was:
- What do you think narwhals use their tooth for?
CRAFTS
This one is an easy craft from Joann: Narwhal Balloons. The site has the printable templates for the fins and tusk. All you really need are balloons and adhesive (tape, glue, etc). We didn’t have the pearls or the scrap paper so we just substituted with what we had 🙂
STEM ACTIVITY
For our science activity, we picked one that you may or may not have come across in an arctic animal lesson – essentially, you get to see how blubber keeps an animal warm in the coldest of temperatures! Like many arctic animals, narwhals also have a layer of blubber that helps keep them warm. The link below is to a short video that shows how to do the experiment as well as explaining the science behind it.
SciShowKids: Fun with Blubber!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our arctic animal learning article! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Awe-Inspiring Arctic Animals, Winter Fun & Winter Learning Fun Ideas!
Happy Learning!
