Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

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The Inuit & Arctic Circle Hands-On Activities

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I thought we were going to skate passed the icky sick season this year because we were doing so good, but it seems like we got a touch of it. Not anything though near like my poor mom. She ended up in the hospital and so as life happens, that threw off our scheduling.

The Inuit & Arctic Circle Hands-On Activities

But I happily make my chicken pot pies anytime my mom requests them if it makes her feel better. Since she is still pretty sick and I am driving back/forth out of town helping my dad to take care of her, I had to shorten this unit study a tad bit.  I wanted to share a few more hands-on ideas that I had kept and saved because we can always come back to this unit. Too, if you are still moving ahead with it, hopefully these ideas can help you.

Me? I am getting spring fever. I have been itching to get my hands on my Home Management Binder as it needs some spring updating and the kids are excited about starting on our ancient civilization unit for this next month.

Let me share these hands-on ideas I have though for this unit in case you can use them.

Look at these beautiful, simple, fun and free {did you get all of that} crafts from LearnCreateLove.

(Pic Att. LearnCreateLove)

Click here for Printable Albatross from LearnCreateLove

(Pic Att. LearnCreateLove)

Click here for Printable Polar Bear Craft from LearnCreateLove.Click on the Winter Crafts for some more easy ideas and printables.

Also, check out this next site called Polar Husky that has free movies, pictures and sound clips of the Arctic. It looks like some of the movies they took down, but there is still so much on the site. To hear the voices of the Inuit and look at their natural surroundings makes you feel like you are there.

This next site, the Donna Ward site has information on it about how to build a game played by the children of the Inuit called Iyaga. The site says: A hollow piece of bone is attached to another thin bone by a sinew cord. The thin bone is held in the hand and the hollow bone is tossed in the air. The player must catch the hollow bone on the thin bone. Click here to go there and make this game.

This next site, Beyond Penguins is so comprehensive it is hard to mention all that is on it.

But here is a snippet above so you can see you will be kept happily clicking away on resources for any topic you want to delve into deeper. Click here to go there and be sure you have lots of time when you visit.

This next free download is a fine arts lesson on how to draw a reindeer and how to show the sky in your drawing depict the aurora shift. Click here to download.

This next site on Sea World has the fun zone. It has games, mazes and puzzles. A really helpful site. Click here to go there.

This printable makes a great minibook for your lapbook or notebooking page.  Click here to download this free Animals of the Arctic Tundra wheel.

{Pic attribution: Royal Baloo}

And because we need to cover all ages when studying this unit, grab this free sweet collection from Royal Baloo for the little folks. Click here to go there and download Arctic Animals for Toddler, PreK and Kindergarten.

Also coming next is my free Inuit and Arctic lapbook.

Hugs and love ya,

Inuit Art, Arctic Circle + 10 Notebooking Pages & Free Resources

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

We kept on rolling with a unit study on Inuit Art, Arctic Circle and 10 Notebooking Pages. Look at the completed unit Arctic and Inuit Unit Study Free Lapbook & Hands-On Ideas.

Focusing on some of the beautiful art work of the Inuit, we learned about soapstone carving and scrimshaw.

The Inuit often carved beautiful and elaborate masks and sculptures.

They used bone, ivory and animal antlers. Today, soapstone (a soft rock) is used too.

I find this point made by the Eskimo Art Gallery helpful in rounding out our definition of soapstone carvings: People frequently ask us for ‘soapstone carvings’, but this term is generally a misnomer. When Inuit Artists began sculpting in stone on a larger scale, their art became known as “soapstone carvings,” regardless of the stone used.

If you get a chance, look at some of the beautiful artwork done at that gallery.

Also, the Free Spirit Gallery was educational in understanding about the materials the Inuit used then and what they use today for their native art.

Picture attribution.

A lot of the shapes, as we learned, were quite simple and emphasis was put on enjoying the process of either telling stories through their handiwork or just being at one with nature.

Inuit Art

Whale ivory was a popular material used too to carve figures either of their environment or even mythological creatures.

We also learned about the art of scrimshaw which is basically carving or etching bone used by Native Americans and then staining the surface.

Scrimshaw is also using pictures that told stories and they are usually carved on ivory walrus tusks and whale bones.

The boys tried their hand on simple carvings since we had a couple of bars of ivory soap laying around. I wished I had the bigger bars because it would have been easier to carve, but these worked too.

The boys heard the words carve and gathered up their dissection kit to use. I think any true wood carver might shudder at the sight of the tools they gathered to use in this project.

They tried a simple drawing first like the polar bear and are still working on perfecting it.

In the meantime, I have new printables ready for you. 

I have 10, well actually 11 notebooking pages. 

Notebooking Pages

The Map It page is made in duplicate because one page provides blanks to label for some easy geography and the other Map It page has been labeled already so there is no writing involved.

The second page can be used as a reference page or by a younger child or because you feel your child has done enough writing.

The first set of printables focuses on the Arctic Circle, some basic geography and Inuit Art. The second set of printables focuses on the animals of the tundra.

I have a lapbook coming too on this unit and wanted to give you a heads up on some other minibooks I have created for animals.

You may prefer to use the ones I have coming instead of the notebooking pages or you can use them in addition to the notebooking pages.

Do you remember this meander book on my Westward Ho unit? Well, this unit just calls for a tiny set of books like I used in the Westward Ho unit because there are so many more animals that we can mention.

So if your child doesn’t want to use the animal notebooking pages, I have some meander minibooks coming on animals that will go in the lapbook.

Here is a glimpse of one mini meander book I have prepared on the Atlantic Puffin.

As you can see, it will be just big enough for a few words to describe about each animal. Tiny still loves this meander mini book. And if you are like us you are doing lots of writing anyway, so I try to keep the lapbooks fun and light on writing.

I also wanted to give you a few more free resources that I have used this week and that have been particularly helpful in doing this unit study. Anymore there is so much free on the internet, it just takes a tad bit of time to organize it and that is normally all I have.

They explain about some of the art and materials use and are a very nice free resource.

Arctic Circle

All About the Inuit for Kids. This is an overall good and easy site to understand about the art, music and animals of the Inuit.

Here is another lesson plan on soap sculpture that is a 9 page download.

Here are some sites I will be using this week and in upcoming lessons.

Biomes: Land of the Inuit  A good lesson plan to compare modern day Inuit to those of the past. Most cultures like to be seen as progressive and the Inuit are no different either. This helps to move our children beyond thinking that the Inuit only live in igloo huts.

History Through Arts

Another soap sculpture lesson plan but this actually focus on stone and not soap. It helps to explain artistic style by viewing different angles.

HOW TO GRAB THE FREE ARCTIC & INUIT LAPBOOK & NOTEBOOKING PAGES

Finally, how to grab the free 34 page lapbook and notebooking pages. It’s a subscriber freebie.

 1) Sign up on my list.
 2)  Grab the freebie now.
3) Last, look for all my emails in your inbox. Glad to have you following me!

Arctic Unit Free Guides & Resources

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I was trying to put off this unit study on the Arctic Unit Free Guide Resources and the Inuit until we at least got our annual 2 days of winter here in Texas.

We wanted to get in a winter sort of mood but like I mentioned last week it has been so spring like here, it has been hard to do that.

Arctic Unit Free Guide Resources

But anyway, we are going forward because we are really excited about starting this unit study.

Well at least Tiny and I are but not so sure about my older boys though. They are killing me I am telling you by staying on their topic of choice, the FBI.

Also, go here to the finished Unit Study Arctic and Inuit Lapbook.

When I start a unit study, I like to start off listing or picturing a lot of my resources. That way if you decide to trail along you can. Here are some of the books and magazines I have in my home library that I will be using. Some I have had for a while, others I collected prior to starting because I had an idea of what we wanted to study for this year. 

Recently, I added in the collection of Julie of the Wolves.

One book that is pictured above and is a keepsake is The Book of Indians by Holling C. Holling written in the 1930’s. 

Beautifully written with rich language as is the style of all of his books, this book explains the different types of Native Americans: northeast woods, plains, desert and northwest coastal.

Though he still uses the word Indian instead of Native American, the stories and sketches are still just worth poring over. So without even hitting the library which I don’t like to have to do all the time, I have enough resources in my home to start this unit.

Am I the only that doesn’t like having to go the library every time? True, it may get expensive but I look at my reference books like my curricula instead of always choosing laid out curricula.

Then the next step in starting my unit is to locate resources that are not just free but that are some better choices. This unit is rich with geography and animal and plant life. But there are other topics too that can be included for the older kids.

Like this lesson plan above that is for grades 5-8. It has a template for snow goggles and talks about limiting sunlight.

Click here to download the free guide.

This next download which includes the two pictures above gives the background of the Arctic region along with case studies on the caribou and the Arctic Tern.

Click here to download the 15 pdf.

This next guide or I should say guides talk about the Arctic animals listed above. There are two guides or grade levels on this teacher’s guide from Seaworld.

These guides are real informative along with having picture cards of the various animals to cut out. Having these guides makes learning this unit easy because a lot of the work is already done.

Click here to download Arctic Animals 4th-8th and Arctic Animals K – 3.

I also see some vocabulary words emerging here. Look at both of these teacher’s guides on the Arctic Animals because they include vocabulary for each level.

Each person’s list will look different depending on what you think your children need to focus on. Here are some of mine I am brainstorming for my youngest.

Arctic Region. (You know a lot of kids, mine too when they were young and we were going over continents, got this mixed up thinking it was a continent instead of a region encompassing several countries). Also, we will focus on: tundra, Inuit, kayak, permafrost, lichen, diapause, scrimshaw and blubber.

I think too this unit just screams a lapbook, don’t you think? Yep, lapbook coming this month too on this newest unit. I have lots more links and hands-on ideas to share with you as we plod along on this unit.

Next post, I will share our first hands-on project for this new unit.

I love this winter quote today:

“I like these cold, gray winter days.  Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”

  ~Bill Watterson~