Monday, January 20, 2014

Unschooling with the Wild Kratts


The latest craze at our house is Wild Kratts.  And I love it too!  It's a great show on PBS that teaches my kids about animals, and that is simply putting it.  I am always amazed at what they learn after one episode.  They learn about geography, weather, conservation, migration, botany, animal habits, food chains, camouflage...I could keep going, but you are seeing the point.

While deciding to move towards unschooling, I did a couple weeks of "school" based off of Wild Kratt episodes.  I let them start the day by watching an episode and then playing in their Wild Kratt outfits.  They have Creature Power Suits (that were a birthday party favor) that are awesome!


They also play with these Creature Pod Communicators I made for them.  You can get the print out for Aviva here if you want to make your own.  I attached elastic on the back so they could wear them around their wrists.  It's fun to hear them yelling "Aviva! Koki! Jimmy!"  They also affectionately call each other "Bro" and "Bro."  


After they have some creative play, I reel them in to make their own Creature Power Discs.  We started by picking a type of animal they wanted to learn about.  On this particular day, BG chose snakes and Jman chose sharks.  So we started looking through our big Wildlife Explorer Book of animals, among others.


This is Jman's creature power disc of the King Cobra.  We had to find out the following information about each animal: color, size, where it is found and what it eats.  Then I let them tell me the special creature powers they would gain while using the disc.  They had a lot of fun!


BG's Black Mamba creature power disc.  We added speed to the important information since it is the fastest snake.  


Lul's creature power disc: purple with a princess sticker.  That about sums her up!  


For the sharks, I printed off a hammerhead shark coloring page at Handipoints and asked the boys to design a Hammerhead Shark Submarine and then tell me what special functions it would have.  You can easily add in copy work of dictated sentences about his submarine or facts about the animal, creative writing, and math games.



They are requesting scorpion power next, so I have found myself a scorpion power disc, along with many others at It's All Fun and Games that I can print off to add to their collection of power discs.  I have VERY excited boys! 


I am going to be coming back to the Wild Kratts theme many times in the future.  It is a winner for us!

Go "live free and in the wild" with these fun ideas!  I hope you find them useful!






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