Explorer and Leadership Study: Ernest Shackleton in Antarctica

I remember my Dad dropping Shackleton's name into the conversation often when I was little.  He was, quite rightly, very proud to have 'connections' to this great explorer, albeit it on my mother's side rather than his own.  I grew up knowing we were related and that this was a good thing.  However, I had…

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Continent Study: Antarctica – How do animals survive the sub-zero temperatures?

Antarctica doesn't have the diversity of wildlife that other continents have.  Those animals which are able to survive the sub-zero temperatures do so because they have adapted to this environment to reduce heat loss, often developing warm windproof coats and layers of blubber.  We did an experiment to investigate how blubber helps to keep an…

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Continent Studies: Antarctica – Creating a Research Lab

One of the things I really wanted to do during our Antarctica study was make an Antarctica Research Laboratory.  Our house is not huge and really does not have unlimited areas in which I could create one.  Although I had only just finished the hallway I decided that under the stairs was the perfect place…

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Tudors and Stuarts: Explorers – Making a Paper Mache Map of the World

Last week the children focused their attentions on the reasons for exploring.  I used blank print out maps from Home School in the Woods and asked the children to fill in the continents and oceans, which they did easily.  As I am trying to include the little ones more, I asked A6 to colour in…

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Continent Study: Antarctica – Resources for Antarctic and Arctic Circle

I've been a bit remiss about geographical studies in our little home school.  We have covered bits and pieces alongside our history but I haven't spend inordinate amount of hours on it.  This year, being an all or nothing kind of a person, I intend to go a bit mad by covering a heap of…

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