Did you know that February 27th is National Polar Bear Day? I didn’t. I wish I had known earlier, as I would have liked to celebrate the day a bit more. I think it is nice to break up our homeschooling routine once in a while by spending a day or week or so doing a unit study on a current subject. So I didn’t get to do as good a job as I would have liked preparing for the day, but I did find some resources that I thought I’d share with you.
- National Geographic has a realistic polar bear coloring page, a multimedia presentation called Bear Beginnings, a computer game called Polar Bear Hockey, and a Creature Feature about polar bears with facts, photos, video, and more.
- The San Diego Zoo has a webcam showing the polar bears in their exhibit and Wildlife HD has video clips of polar bears in the wild
- Jan Brett has a video that shows you how to draw a polar bear and an incredible coloring mural printout based on her book, The Three Snow Bears, which has realistic artwork of many arctic animals, but also outfits that can be put on the animals like paper dolls.
- Danielle’s Place and Twiggle Magazine have some polar bear craft projects
- Learning Page has polar bears in the ocean animals and zoo animals sections, the fact file has a full sheet with facts and picture to color (except that polar bears are white, so you wouldn’t really color that would you?) – in addition, polar bears appear intermittently throughout the fun sheets, lesson plans, recommended reading, etc. They also have some polar bear story cards in their monthly set of sheets. (Membership is required to print many of the worksheets, but it is free and I have never been spammed by them)
- Here is a unit plan for Mary Pope Osborne’s Polar Bears Past Bedtime (Magic Treehouse book #12) and there is also an official study guide for the book.
- Family Fun has a recipe/directions for some cute polar bear cupcakes
- Here is a Squidoo Lens about polar bears with lots of interesting information and photos