Antarctic Adventures

You know you're immersed in something when you start to dream about it!

Last night, my baby (aka the two year old) had a fever and didn’t sleep well. When I finally fell back asleep at about 4am, I started having weird dreams. Does this ever happen to anyone else when your sleep is hijacked?  My most unusual dreams happen during these times.

In my dream, Jim Henson like penguin puppets were flying through the sky. (Like I said, weird dreams – especially since penguins don’t fly.  Seriously, I really do know this...)  I stopped the car and started naming the different breeds. "Look, an Adalie and there’s a Rock Hopper penguin."  Before I could find anymore weird Muppets-like penguins falling out of the sky, Rich woke me up.

It’s been a fun week exploring the coldest place on earth – Antarctica!  But this weird dream put me at peace about leaving.

We first read about penguins.  What little boy doesn't want to learn about these adorable creatures, especially when they discovered that the daddy Emperor penguins had the job of taking care of the eggs and new hatchlings.

After I timed the boys to see how long they could keep their 'eggs' safely nestled on top of their feet, the boys all agreed that the 2 month stint these daddy penguins pull off without any food is quite amazing.

We loved reading more about these amazing penguins in the delightful book, The Emperor's Egg. The story instantly drew the boys in and then there were extra facts on the Emperor penguins peppered throughout that I could scan for extra information to share...

We also LOVED the book, Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems.  These funny little poems were packed full of all kinds of interesting information. and before we knew it the boys were practically reciting them as I would read the book over and over and over again!

And of course, we are revisting a family favorite, Mr. Popper's Penguins for the third time this year!

Being on the 'cold' kick that we are, the boys loved playing around with their muffin-mold icebergs and the little penguin figurinesthat we found.  The figures are actually replica's of the different breeds of penguins and they've had fun identifying them and playing around with them all week.  The sensory stimulation of the ice has been fun for them as well.  We also enjoyed playing around with Jojoebi's penguin cards as we explored the different kinds of penguins!

I think they've requested to play with these multiple times each day all week long!  Hurray for relatively painless dinner prep time!!!

Xander (almost 6) and I loved reading Trapped by the Ice!: Shackleton's Amazing Antarctic Adventure.  I had grand visions of pretending to go on an Antarctic expedition, but Keegan just wasn't interested.  Oh well, next time, right?!?