Asia Continent Box and challenge!

Last year I tried to put together some continent boxes and study one continent per month.  Well, it only lasted about 3 continents!!!  Such is life.  So this year I'm hoping to accomplish it!  I saw Carissa's Continent Box Challenge and thought the kids would love it....and was I right!  So much more exciting to have a 'challenge'!  They can earn prizes for filling in X number of boxes.  I didn't want to spend money on prizes so they're easy like "2 hours computer time", "candy bag" (to eat as fast or slow as they want - put together by mom of course), and the highest is "2 nights up late"!  They LOVED it :)  Funny how exciting the little things are :)  I couldn't get Carissa's pdf's to be rewritable, so my husband made me blank templates to fill in.

I would love to collect items from various continents over the years, because we don't have any now...just books and activities...

Captain has to fill in all boxes to get the top prize, and Rex less.  The boxes range from super easy (find on globe, color a flag)  

to more time consuming (completing pin map).

I got most of my printables from Montessori Print Shop and some others elsewhere free online.

Tot always wants in on the action so here he is matching up the Asian animal 3 part cards.

That's all the pictures I got of our Asia study :)  I am using it alongside Erica's Expedition Earth for Captain.  We love it. They even get a passport with their picture on it and we stamp each country we 'visit'  Each week we focus on a different country and the continents last about 6 weeks so it's perfect! It helps involve the other two in learning about the continents.  Honestly, if I tried to get them to do "extra school" without the challenge, no one would want to! Of course :)  But the challenge makes it exciting to earn prizes :)  It's some work on my part, but I'll keep it from year to year so it's worth it! Fun, fun, fun...

Continent study - Antarctica

Another continent down.

In October we studied Antarctica.  For our sensory bin, I purchsed two different toobs - the penguin one and the Arctic one.  It was a hit.  I added cotton balls for snow and blue glass thingys for water.

Doing our 3 part cards on the animals and matching them to our animals.

Then mama wanted to do a new 'sensory bin' of sorts....washing/playing with our animals in 'snow' (shaving cream)!  As messy as this looks, there was no mess to clean up!!! Amazing!
My thought was we'd just play with them in the 'snow' and smear our hands around...

then it traveled a little up our arms...

then full body armor!!! Rex was out by this point and in the shower because a little got in a cut on his arm, but tot was right there doing everything exactly as big brother was doing it!

Then we got to wash all the animals off in the shower (and little men off in the shower!)  This really had nothing to do with Antarctica, but it was sure fun!

Rex did a little intro into adding (with penguins):

little tot is always right where his big brother is!

We did a great experiment using Crisco.  We put about 1 cup into a baggie, then our hand into another baggie (to keep it clean) into the Crisco.  In a bowl of ice water, we immersed our hands - one bare and the other with the big layer of fat to see how the animals can handle the Arctic temps.  It was pretty amazing. We all tried it and you could barely feel the cold under the 'blubber'!

For our daily calendar we used Carissa's Calendar Connections Let's Explore the Arctic cards and learned a little fun fact everyday.

I also ordered two books from Cathswap about Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition.....it was a great story.

Anyway, that's our month!  We ended by watching March of the Penguins of course!

Now onto South America...