Polar Bear Learning Activites

After that post about penguin learning activities, I couldn’t resist sharing some polar bear activities, too. You can do a whole week of learning about cold-weather animals, or just throw in some polar bear activities to add to your winter fun.

Learn about the life cycle of a polar bear and do some polar bear learning and writing using the printables from Homeschool of 1.

Get some cutting practice with a polar bear twist from Simple Everyday Mom. She has other great worksheets for practicing the letter P and labeling a polar bear, too.

Sort nouns and verbs with a polar bear twist with these printable activities for 3 Dinosaurs. They’re related to the Magic Tree House book about polar bears, which might be fun to read (or the nonfiction companion book) while you’re doing these activities. They also have printable polar bear ten frames you can use to practice counting.

Homeschool Share has a printable polar bear math mat where kids roll a die and add snow to the polar bear’s snow globe. This is an easy project for one to one correspondence.

Unscramble words related to polar bears and the Arctic with this printable from Miniature Masterminds. Or solve polar bear mazes with help from Planes and Balloons. Grab a super cute polar bear memory game from Simple Everyday Mom.

Get kids moving and playing with sound with the polar bear sound game from Growing Book By Book. You can play this with rhyming words, saying how many syllables are in a word or words in a sentence, or other ways she talks about in the post.

Add a little STEM to your exploration of polar bears by learning how blubber keeps polar bears warm (this activity from I Can Teach My Child looks super fun) and learn about polar bear dens and designing your own with this activity from Primary Theme Park.

Polar Bear Board Game

Polar Bear Card Game

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Penguin Learning Activities for Kids

The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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Have you read?

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