Very Last First Time {FIAR}

A few weeks ago we rowed Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews.

Considering that we were in the midst of a cold snap, the book couldn't have been introduced at a better time!

Although when I explained to the girls that Ungava Bay has temperatures even colder than our own part of Canada they refused to believe me! Haha!

Very Last First Time is about a young Inuit girl named Eva who goes under the sea ice when the tide is out to collect mussels.

This time though she goes for the very first time all by herself on this dangerous mission.

Social Studies:

First of all we watched a video of this mussel seeking tradition in real life.
I had never heard of this before reading this book.
It's rather incredible!

Piper colored in Canada and we found Ungava Bay on our big wall map.

We talked about doing things for the first time and how that makes us feel.

I told them stories about driving a car by myself for the first time and becoming a mom for the first time.

I asked Piper what she looked forward to doing on her own for the first time.

Her answer: Going to the mall by myself.

Of course!

Language Arts:

There are many action words in this story so I had the girls dramatize each one.

We've done this before and it always proves to be a blast.

Also, it is a wonderful way of explaining words that may be new to them.

Art:

Both girls did a polar bear painting that was a lot of fun since it included different steps.

You can get full instructions at That Artist Woman (my FAVORITE children's art blog!!).

Piper also made this paper Inuit girl to display on the front of her lapbook.

We took some time to watch some videos on Inuit life.

One included the Inuit art of carving.

We decided to try our hand at it with some soap and a few tool recommendations I found here.

This proved to be a very enjoyable and relaxing activity!

Math:

I taught Piper about ordinal numbers.

We practiced them using a polar animal game I found.

I lined the animals up under numbers I'd written out on Piper's file folder.

Then I read a clue for an animal.

Once she figured out which animal it was I would ask her what place that animal was in.

This ended up being a lot of fun and we played it several times!

Piper also played a math computer game at TurtleDiary.com that focused on ordinal numbers.

Science:

I'm a little squeamish around sea food so I asked my Mom to help me out since I felt it was necessary for the girls to get their hands on some mussels and really understand what they were.

She happily obliged and we had a fun afternoon with the girls' Nana and Boppa exploring and taste testing mussels!
(Thanks for the new experience, Nana and Boppa!)

Final verdict: 

Piper spit hers back out in disgust.

Taitum gobbled hers right up and claims she likes them.

Mama admitted they were not quite as bad as she thought they were going to be but she'd NEVER risk her life to get some from under the ice!

We took some time the next day to learn some facts about mussels.

Piper also cut out some pictures of the creatures Eva finds in the tide pool while exploring under the ice.

(Both of these printables are from Homeschool Share.)

In our Elemental Science curriculum we were learning about crystals and our experiment was to grow some Borax crystals.

We decided to make ours a snowflake shape which tied in well with our 'winter' focus.

This was a fun experiment and we were all pretty impressed with the results of our crystal growing!

As a go along book we also read I is for Inuksuk which provided many interesting facts about Inuit life.

There are many inuksuks to be seen in Very Last First Time and the girls were quick to point them all out.

We learned about their purpose and for fun did this inuksuk shadow match.

This was such a fun row!

As you can see there was a lot of art and science for this one but like I said earlier - we were in the midst of some awfully cold temperatures!

Keeping busy with all these activities kept the cabin fever at bay for a time!