Nature In Your Nurture

Books

🌿🌻 Baby Beluga by Raffi
This beautifullly-illustrated board book features all three verses of Raffi’s beloved song with many different North American arctic animals represented! I usually sing the full song on the first run-through before going back and finding all of the arctic animals we recognize in the pictures.

🌿 🌻Mama Do You Love Me by Barbara M. Joose
In this story, a young Inuk girl asks her mother how far her love would go. Her mother insists that she would love her “forever and always,” even if she broke their ptarmigan eggs, threw water on their lamp, or turned into a polar bear. While primarily being a book about love and family, this book features quite a few arctic animals that are important to Inuit culture.

🌿🌻 Who’s Hiding in the Snow by Katherine McEwen
This lift-the-flap board book has simple short text supplemented with a brief fact about polar animals scattered about under each flap. This book includes both terrestrial and oceanic animals from Antarctica, the arctic regions of several continents, and the polar ice cap.

🌿🌻S is for Seal by DK Publishing (illustrated by Jean Claude)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about seals from around the world, including elephant seals, harbor seals, and ribbon seals!

🌿🌻W is for Whale by DK Publishing (illustrated by Livi Gosling)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about whales from around the world, including humpback whales, sperm whales, minke whales, and dolphins.

🌿🌻Takuqkaujakka/This is What I See by Looee Arreak
This illustrated board book counts animals on the tundra from one to five and then repeats the text with different pictures, but two things set this simple board book apart: it features Inuktitut syllabics and romanized Inuktitut language, and it’s based on a song also by Looee Arreak.

🌿🌻Qupirrut/Meeka Loves Nature: Insects by Danny Christopher
This board book explores the world of insects in the wild arctic, including arctic butterflies, blackflies, ladybugs, mosquitos, and wooly bear caterpillars & moths. The edition I found featured Inuktitut and English.

🌿Over in the Arctic by Marianne Berkes
This illustrated book is another reimagining of “Over in the Meadow” and takes us through ten arctic animals native to North America (20 if you include the hidden animals from each page). As with Berkes’ other books in this series, there are additional facts about all of the animals at the end of the book.

🌿Kits Cubs & Calves: An Arctic Summer by Suzie Napayok-Short
This book is a bit wordy for young children, but it’s a gem of culture and biology.  A child visits her aunt and uncle in Saatut, Greenland for the summer.  A boat ride out on the ocean gets her and her family within sight (but safe distance) of a pod of beluga whales with babies and an eating mother polar bear on the shore with her cubs.  The book references dog-sledding, ethnic foods, and increasing conflict between humans and displaced by melting sea ice.  It also uses many Inuktitut words throughout the story and provides a guide to pronouncing Inuktitut words at the back of the book.

🌿 The Lights That Dance in the Night by Yuval Zommer
This beautifully illustrated book is narrated by the northern lights, describing the reactions of the arctic animals as they see the lights. Most of the book also has rhyme and rhythm (but not the beginning).

🌿 A Thing Called Snow by Yuval Zommer
An arctic fox and hare are curious about the coming snow and wondering what snow is like. Many animals describe the characteristics of snow and Fox and Hare find many things that match those descriptions—but aren’t snow. When they stop for the night, cold, sparkly white snowflakes begin to fall and the friends wake to a wintry world where they play in the snow until Bear and Caribou come to help the friends walk home.

🌿The Lonely Polar Bear by Khoa Le
A polar bear separated from his family meets a spirit child of the northern lights. As they part ways, the bear meets more and more arctic animals and finds he’s no longer lonely—but the lights are always there, even when it’s not dark enough to see them.

🌿Through the North Pole Snow by Polly Faber
A hungry arctic fox seeking food digs its way down through the snow into a warm home, becoming stuck in the ceiling.  He’s pulled out by a white-bearded man in a red sweater who offers him dinner before going to sleep.  The man sleeps until the arctic summer (and the fox sleeps on and off as well).  The man begins working, building toys and filling many shelves with them.  When the winter snows arrive, they bring with them thousands of letters from children.  The man invites the fox to join him in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and at the end of the night the fox and Santa go home.  This very cute book about Santa at the north pole  beautifully blends holiday fantasy with the natural cycles of arctic life.

🌿Hanukkah in Alaska by Barbara Brown
This book is primarily about how people in Alaska live with the inevitability of intruding moose walking along their cleared streets and sidewalks and eating their trees. In the story, a girl celebrates Hanukkah with her family but cannot shake her concerns that the moose that’s moved into their backyard will get its antlers tangled in her swing and rip it down. In the end she finds a creative solution to lure the moose out of her yard to save her swing. It was informative and funny and I honestly loved this book.

Ten on the Sled by Kim Norman
This funny illustrated story is set to the tune of “Ten in the Bed” as a sled full of arctic animals sets off down a hill, spilling more and more animals as it goes faster and faster. I love to speed up a little with each verse, so it helps to start out at a particularly slow pace.

I Am Actually a Penguin by Sean Taylor
In this story, a young child with a penchant for dressing up is gifted a penguin costume. She loves being a penguin so much that she won’t take it off, and insists on engaging in natural penguin behaviors. This funny book is a celebration of childhood interest and all things penguin.

Creative Art Opportunities

🐻‍❄️Collage with paper snowflake confetti
🐻‍❄️Collage with cotton balls
🐻‍❄️Painting with frozen paint cubes
🐻‍❄️Painting with white on white paper
🐻‍❄️”Countershade” painting with black and white

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Use a flashlight and a glass of colored water to recreate the northern lights on the wall
⛅️Play with arctic animal toys
⛅️Explore white rice in sensory bin
⛅️Ice in water table
⛅️Cardboard box cave
❄️Arctic animals with snow in sensory bin (keeping white toys from becoming lost in outdoor snow).
❄️Build a cave in a snow pile
❄️Slide down a snow pile like a seal or penguin
❄️Shuffle feet through the snow like a tall emperor penguin
❄️Take a white sheet outdoors and try to blend into the snow

Songs to Learn and Sing

“Baby Beluga“ – Raffi

“Polar Bear” (Origin unknown; Tune: “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”)

The polar bear lives in Alaska
He never gets cold in a storm
He swims in cold, icy waters
His heavy coat helps keeps him warm.

Warm, warm, warm, warm
His heavy coat helps keep him, warm, warm, warm
Warm, warm, warm, warm
His heavy coat helps keep him, warm!

“In The Arctic“ – Jamaroo Kids

In the arctic there is lots of snow and
In the arctic it is very cold and
All of the animals have lots of fur or layers to stay warm
In the arctic
Who’s in the arctic today?

The arctic hare, she digs through the snow. 
She looks for food and then brings it home…
In the arctic

The snowy owl is big and white. 
She flies through the day and also through the night…
In the arctic

The walrus likes water and also likes land and
He has big flippers to use instead of hands…
In the arctic

The seals they like swimming and diving too. 
They dive almost a thousand feet to search for their food…
In the arctic

The puffins they are black and white and they have a beak. 
They have two wings so they can fly. They paddle with their feet…
In the arctic

The polar bears swim very fast they have webbed feet, you know. 
They keep themselves very clean by rolling in the snow…
And all of these animals live in the arctic
Who’s in the arctic?

NIYN – Polar Expedition on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.