March 27th 2014 - The Arctic

During circle time we shared news and talked about our favourite animals. Ellie had been to a festival and got new shoes, and said her favourite animal is a wolf. Max had been to hostel and had a midnight feast. Ava's auntie was coming to visit. Maia and Magdelene's favourite animal is a cat; Anna's  is a dog. Nick had been to hostel and gone on a beautiful walk to a hill fort; his favourite animal is a dolphin. Julie had started the Headington Elfins blog. Louis' favourite animal is a snake.

We then talked about polar bears. Lots of people knew facts about polar bears. Joseph told us their skin is really black and their fur colourless, but the light reflecting off it makes it look white. We learnt that they are really good swimmers and have a fantastic sense of smell - they can smell their favourite food, seals, from a kilometre away. They live in the Arctic and hunt on the sea ice, however the sea ice is becoming smaller each year, so they are finding it difficult to hunt enough food to keep them going through hibernation.  This is because of climate change making the sea warmer. Climate change is now the biggest threat to the 20-25,000 polar bears in the wild. 

We then played a game of polar bears, a bit like musical chairs, but with sheets of newspaper as the icebergs which the polar bears (Elfins) had to get onto when the music stopped. One or two icebergs were taken away after each round until there were twelve polar bears trying to get onto one iceberg! Some of the icebergs realistically broke apart during each round too...

The activity over the next two weeks is to make snow domes. First we modelled polar bears using white Fimo oven-bake clay....

Then we played a game of penguins, where everyone but one person sits on a chair, leaving one chair spare. 

 Then the 'penguin' waddles through the room trying to sit on the spare chair - with the others trying to stop them by moving chairs! 

It's fast and furious, and only slightly dangerous

...especially with the added complication of a wheelchair.







We finished off with Link Your Hands together. 

Julie went home and baked the polar bears ready for finishing off next week.