My wiser-than-me mother-in-law always reminds, “It’s great to have a plan, but know, things probably won’t go according to plan.” And that’s exactly how things played out as we dove into a recent multi-elementary-age science unit.
I’d planned to keep things simple by lumping the Arctic and Antarctic together while teaching my preschooler, kindergartner, 2nd grader, and 4th grader about polar habitats. But more organically than I could have planned they began asking questions.
But why don’t polar bears and penguins live in the same place?
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I truly knew the difference between the Arctic and Antarctic myself. And so searching for a way for the kids to differentiate helped fill-in the gaps of my own learning and gave me renewed perspective about this amazing world we get to live in. The love for learning I’ve discovered during this homeschooling journey has been one of my favorite parts of teaching.
To see how we discovered the differences and similarities between the Arctic and Antarctic, and download FREE printables, read the rest in my contributing post at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
