Mail from...Alaska

I LOVE when I have an idea for an okay lesson that Beck gets carried away with and pretty soon we've come up with something pretty cool!  That's what's happening right now-I had animal flash cards to divide into groups by number of legs or stripes/no stripes.  He, of course, took it a step farther and is now busily drawing an 11x14 "habitat" where all those animals can live.  He's amazing!

That's exactly what happened a few weeks ago when we pulled out our Alaska postcard!  (Oddly enough, the topic was animal related that day, too).  The postcard itself had no extra information written on it, but did have a cute cartoon of Alaska's baby animals.  I tested myself a minute, trying to remember the Alaska state bird and then was transported back to my time living there.  It really is a place where everything you hear about or see on tv is 100% real.

Alaska State Bird: Ptarmigan

We decided to use google images to find pictures of baby animals that live in Alaska.  We came up with photos for wolves, caribous, marmots, puffins, beluga whales, lynx, grizzly bears, salmon, mountain goats, and polar bears.

For an activity I found a simple tutorial to make a pop-up greeting card on Enchanted Learning.  I was excited to finally figure out how to do something as easy as that.  Beck's mind was running way ahead of mine and before I knew it we'd printed out all our baby animal images for him to put into his greeting card.

What was the last activity your children took eons farther than you had planned for?