At the beginning of this study I had been looking forward to making an official Antarctica Continent box. I have never made a continent box before and I loved the very idea of collecting themed bits and pieces. I mean, is there anything more fun than that? I knew exactly the box I had in mind. It was the box our Cover Story curriculum arrived in and was the perfect size and shape. The first thing I did was stick a map of Antarctica on it and label it:
On the flip side of the lid I stuck a territorial map to remind the children that there were no Antarcticans but that Antarctica belonged to many nations all of whom had agreed to look after it and protect it:
Now for the fun part – filling it.
I searched the house for any books pertaining to Antarctica. These first two are lovely easy reading for the older ones but are not too hard for A6 to read and as you would expect the pictures are typical Usbourne quality. A6 read both of these during her time with Granny:
These two science books were perfect for our Antarctica study and brought in some scientific reading and thinking:
The Dr Seuss books were just for fun, but contained a surprising amount of factual information written in his usual humourous, poetic way:
The other book is kind of cool. It goes through lots of different countries and the weather they would see during a day in March. It includes both the Arctic and the Antarctic:
as well as a really lovely colourful map in the back:
I also included all the magazines written about Antarctica that I could get my hands on (see my resource page for where I sourced everything from):
Of course a continent box wouldn’t be complete without some of the animals found there. I included some lovely Schleich ones as well as two wind up penguins for the littles to play with and the family of Emperer Penguins L12 had made as a gift:
I photocopied a couple of other maps so that there were enough to go round during discussion times:
I squeezed everything into my handy dandy continent box and here it is, all finished and full to the brim with goodies for the children to explore:
Coooo-elle!