Winter Packet: Earth’s Axis/Seasons, The Arctic vs. Antarctica, Polar Animals and More (100+ pages)

The past few weeks, my daughter has been doing a big Winter Unit. The first part is about 60 pages and covers topics such as Earth’s axis, the months and seasons, the Arctic vs. Antarctica, and goes in depth about various polar animals.

The second part, pages 63 to 78, includes some PreK activities. This is a really fun winter unit with lots of hands-on activities, lapbook/interactive notebook pieces, various worksheets and more!  Today I’m going to share this huge packet with you!    I know that we homeschoolers often have a wide range of ages, so hopefully this packet includes material that will appeal to many of your kids (or includes materials that your kids can use next year!!)

This packet is probably best for preK thru early elementary.  My daughter is currently 8 years old (in Grade 3). Now, let me tell you what is included!

Yesterday, I shared the really fun crystal-growing project my daughter started with.  We set that aside and then dove into her packet.

We talked first about Earth’s axis and how/why the tilt of the Earth creates the different seasons. We talked about the solstice/equinox and what those mean and when they occur. We also went over which seasons went with which months.  I was kind of surprised that she found this challenging (it’s so intuitive for me as an adult, I had no idea it might be difficult). I wound up back-pedaling and created the sheet you see below/right listing January and a blank (where she wrote winter) and so forth.  (For younger students, there is a tracing page to go over the months and seasons.)

Next, we started talking about some of the major differences between the Arctic and Antarctica. Things such as

• Antarctica is a continent; land surrounded by sea.
• Antarctica is 98% covered in ice.
• Antarctica is the highest of all the continents at an average height of 2,300m (or 1.4 miles). Temperatures are colder at higher elevations.
• The Arctic is a semi-enclosed ocean, almost completely surrounded by land.
• During much of the year, the Arctic Ocean is covered in sea ice that can exceed six feet thick.
• The Arctic is not as cold as the Antarctic.

When my older daughter saw that ED was going to learn about Polar Animals… she said ME TOO!!!!  This packet highlights about 18 animals. There are Montessori 3-Part Cards with these polar animals, plus various matching pages (word to picture, shadow to animal, shadow to word, etc.)

I also made a number of lapbook pieces.  ED actually used these as interactive notebook pages which she added to her science notebook, but your kids could use these to make a lapbook instead.

Click here to save this for later on Pinterest:

Note: The polar animal pieces you see below are blank. Have your kids research about their favorite animal/s (what they eat and so forth) and add that to their lapbook. (They don’t have to do all of the animals!)  For younger kids, they could just write the name of the animal on the inside.

ED spent quite a bit of time learning about the differences between seals, sea lions, and walruses. There is a set of lapbook pieces about seals/sea lions/walruses and one about penguins. These particular pieces have a cut-and-paste option with information about them. There is a page about the penguin life cycle. Of course, the girls took a balled up sock and had penguin races with the sock/egg on their feet to see who could waddle the fastest without losing their egg!

There are a number of hands-on activity ideas about whales. These were activities our family actually did a number of years ago, but I included instructions in the packet with activities about insulation, how blubber keeps whales warm and helps with their buoyancy, toothed vs. baleen whales, and more.

Finally, there are about 12 pages or so of various PreK activities: do-a-dot pages, find the letter, find the number, capital letter matching and build-a-word activity, lacing c

New Section Added! I just added a 25+ page Hibernation Unit to the Winter Packet. You’ll find these on pages 84 to 115. See more pictures and find out more about the hibernation unit here.

Winter Packet and Hibernation Unit Quick Preview

Our Winter Packet & Hibernation Unit is $4.99.

Once you pay for this packet, you will immediately receive a link to download this file (which will open in a browser window).  You will also receive an email from Sendowl (the service I use) to your PayPal email address which will have a link you can click on to download the Winter Packet.  It may take a few moments to arrive.  Of course, if you have any issues just email me at — liesl at homeschoolden dot com.  You can also reach me by using the contact form on the blog or by replying to the email from SendOwl.

Winter Packet and Hibernation Unit, 100+pages

Remember to check your PayPal email address for the email from SendOwl.

The Winter Packet (including the Hibernation mini-unit) is included in both Big Animal BUNDLE or Big Animal BUNDLE 2

   $19.99 Big Animal BUNDLE – This Bundle includes 8 PDF packets.  1) Animal Unit, 2) World Animals Packet, 3) Rainforest Packet, 4) Life Cycles Packet, 5) Winter Packet & Hibernation Unit Plus three mini-units on 6) wolves, 7) cicadas and 8) chameleons.  See the Big Animal BUNDLE page for more details.

Don’t forget to check your PayPal email address for the download link!

Big Animal BUNDLE 2

Big Animal BUNDLE 2 includes all of the units above, plus the Mitten Activities Packet, Dinosaur Packet and the new Australia Packet!

$29.99 Big Animal BUNDLE 2 This second animal bundle option includes1) Animal Unit, 2) World Animals Packet, 3) Rainforest Packet, 4) Life Cycles Packet, 5) Winter Packet plus the 6) Cicada Packet 7) Chameleons Packet 8) Wolves Packet 9) Mitten Activity Packet 10) Dinosaur Unit and the 11) Australia Unit.

These units are all sold separately as well. See the Big Animal BUNDLE page for more details about each of these units.

Don’t forget to check your PayPal email address for the download link.  You can always email me if you need help! ~Liesl

Scroll down for pictures or visit the Big Animal BUNDLE page for more details about each of these units.

  $5.99  Animal Unit (100+ pages) – This unit covers animal characteristics, Feather, fur or scales?,  animal classification (the animal kingdoms, vertebrates and invertebrate groups), insects vs. spiders, animal tracks, animals homes and shelters, herbivores/carnivores/omnivores and more!  Quick Preview

  $4.99  World Animals Unit (75+ pages) Animals of the 7 Continents: Montessori 3-part cards and Activity Pages and the new animals of the African Savanna,  Quick Preview

$4.99 Amazon Rainforest Packet (50 pages) Quick Preview

$4.99 Life Cycles Packet (50 pages) Explore the life cycles of the chicken, sea turtle, frog, mosquito, butterfly, dragonfly, bee, ladybug, mouse Quick Preview

2.50 Chameleons Packet This 15-page mini-unit helps kids learn all about chameleons from where they live and what they eat to how big they are and why the change colors.

$0.00 FREE Living Nonliving Cards and Worksheets (More info here)

$6.99 Australia Unit (75-pages) This unit covers the geography and animals of Australia.  Students will learn the location and basic facts about the states and territories of Australia. Then they will go on to learn more about Australia’s animals. They will learn about many of Australia’s marsupials and monotremes as well as other well-known birds and reptiles.  See more about this new unit at this post: Australia Packet Click on the link to see more pictures: Image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4, image 5, image 6, image 7, image 8, image 9, image 10, image 11 This unit is not included in the Big Animal BUNDLE. It is included in Big Animal BUNDLE 2.

$4.99 Dinosaur Unit (100+ pages – Multi-Age Packet: 75 pages for ages 3-6; 80+ pages for ages 7-9) View Post or View Image 1 image 2, image 3, image 4 lapbook, image 4, image 5, image 6, image 7, image 8, image 9, image 10, image 11, image 12This unit is not included in the Big Animal BUNDLE. It is included in Big Animal BUNDLE 2.

  $3.50 Mitten Activities Packet (40 pages) View Post or View image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4  This unit is not included in the Big Animal BUNDLE.

$5.99 Five Senses Unit You can find out more about our NEW 100+ page Five Senses Packet. Details are here: View Post, image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4, image 5

And if you want to go into more depth about the Earth, layers of the Earth, plate movement, earthquakes, mountain making, volcanoes and more be sure to check out our Earth Science Packet. We did a ton of hands-on activities with that unit!

See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts.  You might want to join our free Homeschool Den Chat Facebook group.  Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well. Happy Homeschooling, everyone!!  ~Liesl