Sugar Cube Igloos

What study of the Arctic would be complete without making an igloo? We made ours out of sugar cubes and had quite a time with this project. Who knew it was so hard to find sugar cubes? Granted, we don't use them everyday, but we had to visit five grocery stores to be able to locate them. Then, once we found them we discovered making an igloo is harder than it looks.

First, the kids didn't think they really needed anything to help hold it together - after all, real igloos are only made with blocks of snow. That didn't work so well. Then, we tried using some white frosting as glue to help hold them together. Somehow our completed igloos turned out looking more like the pyramids of the Amazon instead of igloos, but it was a fun project.

After many attempts, Doodle Bug decided to make a home for some penguins instead, using more of our polar stickers to decorate the inside of her ice house. I like her creativity (c:

Northern Lights Chalk Art

As part of our Arctic study we learned about the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Boralis. We learned that the lights are caused by charged particles colliding in the earth's atmosphere. Living in Oklahoma we are not likely to see them for ourselves, so we used the wonders of google to search out images of the lights. Then, the kids made their own Northern Lights pictures using dark construction paper, sidewalk chalk (though I think pastels would work better for this project if we had them on hand), some polar foam stickers and cotton balls for the snow. I love making mixed media art with the kids, I think it makes for much more interesting finished projects. I had the kids research what colors were actually in the Northern Lights and find out what caused the different colors. Then they used their chalk to add some color streaks to the sky and a tissue to blend the colors together to give it a more natural look. After they were all done, we sprayed on some hairspray to help set the colors and keep them from smudging further.

Soap Scrimshaw

What better time to study the frozen Arctic then when the snow is finally melting and the signs of spring are coming up? It makes perfect sense to us (but we are slightly odd people). As part of our Arctic study we learned about scrimshaw, a handicraft made be sailors out of bones and teeth of marine animals. We are really quite fond of marine animals and opted not to harvest their bones or teeth for our project. So, what does that leave us with? Soap of course (again, this makes perfect sense to us). To create her scrimshaw art, Doodle Bug chose an Arctic animal that she though might have been included on a true scrimshaw piece and since she's such a dog fan her chosen animal is the arctic wolf. Our soap carving was done with simple household tools - tooth picks, a butter knife and the occasional scissors point (when she thought mom wasn't looking). The sailors made their engravings pop using a pigment, which we thought would be sort of like ink or paint. After careful consideration of the mess factor of using ink we opted for paint. Once the carving was complete, Doodle Bug rubbed some black paint into her engraving and the wiped off the excess. The whole project took about an hour to complete, and makes a really cool addition to our unit study.

Seed Viewer Project

Last semester for science we covered plants and their needs. Doodle Bug really enjoys science, but does not enjoy book work so much so we compromised and created this seed viewer project.

It's really simple - we used a clear plastic cup, few red kidney beans, some brown felt and a few paper towels. We cut the felt to fit and stuck it in the cup, placed the beans between the cup and the felt and wadded the paper towels up and put them in the middle of the cup.

Doodle Bug made two of these and kept one in the dark depths of her closet and the other in the window sill to enjoy some natural sunlight. At first, the plant in the dark grew much more quickly, but when the plants started to grow above the cup line the plant quickly died. We concluded that this was because seeds don't need sunlight (since they are normally buried anyhow) but plants do.

We did discover that the roots will grow into the felt so we suggest using construction paper instead if you try this project at home. Doodle Bug's beans that grew in the light did really well, but they did not survive the felt-ectomy to re-pot them.