Arctic Diorama

Last week, the boys and I made an arctic diorama.  I asked the boys to help me assemble a small diorama that we can place on the table for exploration and subject of discussion in the course of our polar region studies.


The one that we made was very simple.  We looked at some photos in our books for inspirations.  Vito picked the image below, so we painted our backdrop with blue and white background.  The backdrop is a shoebox cover and when the paint dried, we covered it with cotton wool to represent snow.


I then attached the backdrop to our tray using double sided tape.  The boys filled the tray with styro beans, Grimm’s blocks (light blue), Grimm’s ocean, and the Grimm’s stackable rocks.  They placed some animals with Safari Ltd Arctic Toob and our Schleich polar bear family.



This became the centerpiece of our working table.  We talked about the arctic region, where it is on our globe, what animals live there and of course why it is so different from Antarctica.  But the main reason why I wanted to make this arctic diorama is to be able to discuss with the boys, why animals in the arctic are mostly white (especially on winter).  Some animals stays white all year round, others change color during summer.  It is so important that I get to show and demonstrate this to them using a simulated environment (or so). With this, Vito learned another word: camouflage.  He enjoyed putting the animals on the backdrop or in the snow and saying the word “camouflage” even though he finds it difficult to pronounce as of the moment.

To help me during discussions, we have a few books that we read on a daily basis about the polar regions.  This will be the subject of my next post, as I’m going to share our list of amazing resources in studying Antarctica and the arctic region.

Till then.