I’d love to say that I single-handedly came up with the lesson plans for our final week in Antarctica, but since I found some that were amazing, I have to share them!

We found the movie Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure through Netflix and we watched it several times. I even cried watching it! The story is absolutely amazing, and if you haven’t heard about it, this is one that you should really check out! You can see a trailer of the film here.

The lesson plans that I found go along with the movie and provide a HUGE resource for teachers and students to follow along and learn more about Shackleton. You can access the full set of plans here and there is also a family movie guide too.

Using the guide, here’s how our week looked:

Monday – We watched the movie together after working on some of our general schoolwork. We also spent a little time on the NOVA online site looking at virtual 360 pictures of various places in Antarctica.

Tuesday – We tracked Shackleton’s expedition using latitude and longitude and the timeline that was provided. We followed along mapping where he first started out, where his ship got stuck and crushed, where the crew was stranded, and eventually where the crew was rescued.

I have to say that McKenna absolutely amazed me during this activity. She was mapping points so quickly and accurately! Have to say that I was rather impressed. :)

Wednesday – We did another journaling activity called “In Your Own Words”. First, we read through different journal entries from Shackleton and his crew. When we were done reading through those entries, we created some of our own entries journaling our day.

Thursday – We did an activity called “What’s on Your Plate?” comparing the things that we ate during our day and what a typical day for Shackleton’s crew might have been. We figured up caloric values and also talked about the differences between carbohydrates, proteins, and/or fat.

Here are some other great resources on Shackleton also:

• Nova online – 360 degree views of Antarctica. Also some other great links via this site.
• Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure film site – lesson plans that I used this week and also some other great resources
• Answers.com – more biography information on Ernest Shackleton
• Nova online – different lesson plans for middle schoolers and up

Hope these resouces help you all out! Can’t tell you how much we’ve enjoyed spending time in Antarctica!

We continued on our journey to the bottom of the Earth this past week – all of us absorbing MUCH more information and having a great time exploring a continent that we didn’t think would be all that exciting! Just today (Sunday) I found some more great links and asked the girls what they would like to do next week and had a very loud: MORE SHACKLETON!! So we’ll be spending a few more days in Antarctica it seems and then moving on to a unit study on penguins for the oldest three.

I will be sharing a ton of the great links that we’ve been using this last week at the end of the post, so be sure to check them out. It is by no means a complete collection, but there are guaranteed to be some great helps for you in the list.

Here’s a look into how our week worked out:

Monday

• Reviewed some of our studies from last week (Antarctica is the 5th largest continent, 99% ice, coldest and windiest continent)
• Continued on our virtual field trip…which led us off on several fun bunny trails
• Started learning about Shackleton, an explorer to Antarctica
• Watched some fun clips on the Southern lights and talked about what causes them. This was our favorite clip.

• played “name that hemisphere” and talked about what hemispheres that Antarctica is in: south, east and west

Tuesday

• Learned more about the animals in Antarctica and watched a movie from National Geographic (which ended up being more of a “snooze-fest” for a certain younger student)

Wednesday

• Learned about different types of plant life in Antarctica: lichen, moss and alga
• Talked about why so few plants grow in Antarctica
• Learned why plants around Antarctica grow better in the ocean than on Antarctica

Thursday

• Talked about the different men that have attempted to explore and have succeeded in first exploring Antarctica: Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton.
• Traced the routes of Amundsen and Scott and compared their different journeys to the South Pole (who was successful, who wasn’t, how they compared to each other)
• Wrote fictional journal entries from the point of view of Amundsen (the first to reach the South Pole). These were hysterical!!

Here is Laurianna’s fictional journal entry:

“I won the race! I can’t wait to return home. I hope Scott found the tent and the letter. We had to kill a lot of the dogs for our trip back home.”

And McKenna’s entry (apparently left at the tent for Scott to find when he arrived behind Amundsen – spelling is her’s):

“I won the race! I’m very happy that I did. You were vary nise. I saw a pengwin today.”

Here are some of the wonderful links that we used this week in our studies:

• Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears – great online K – 5 magazine that provides lesson plans and much more for kids and teachers. This link is specifically to their magazine archive.
• Lesson plan on auroras (and oh.my.word a ton of activities that you can do and spend all week long on – but we didn’t. Also from Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears
• Time lapse video of Antarctica (over the period of a year)
• Nova Online – companion site to program “Warning on the Ice”
• Amundsen’s journey to the South Pole – fictional article written to tell story of Amundsen’s journey to South Pole
• Timeline index of explorers
• Antarctica explorers – talks about the four most prominent explorers
• South Pole.com – has some great pictures of old letters and is a site dedicated to the heroic explorers of the Antarctic area

Our trip will continue next week, so be sure to check back to see more about our studies on Shackleton. We are having so much fun with this study. If you would like more info on Antarctica and links, be sure to check out my first post of our studies, To the Bottom of the Earth: Antarctica for Kids ::Week 1::.

When I initially set out our yearly plan, I “budgeted” time for the various countries and continents that we were going to be studying, Antarctica included. I figured that we could get everything done for the North and the South Pole in 2 weeks.

Because, really. It’s just a snowy landmass, right?

We started studying Antarctica this last week and it’s looking like this could be a much longer study that I originally thought. The girls (and I) are learning so much…and having a lot of fun with it in the process, so we are only going to study Antarctica for now and then do a unit study/lapbook on penguins.

We found a GREAT video clip showing a penguin being chased by a pod of orcas. The video clip is below. It’s about 5 minutes long but really rather funny.

I found a copy of Antarctica by Evan Moor at a book sale and it has been a huge help in our studies. The more I dig and search on the internet, I also find some other great sites, which I’ll share a little later. Here’s a look at our week (just the geography/Antarctica related things):

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Here are some of the websites that we used this week:

And a few of the books that we used in our studies:

Next week we will be studying more about the animals and plants in the Antarctic and also look more at the expeditions to the South Pole in the early 1900’s.