Houlton kindergarten students, parents visit Antarctica

In 1911, an explorer named Roald Amundsen reached Antarctica. He was the first human to reach the South Pole and his description of this strange and wonderful land would make any explorer at heart want to visit. “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black; in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale,” was his exact description.
Yet, nearly 100 years later, the Kindergarten students at Houlton Elementary School have shown they are true explorers at heart, as they have been “exploring” this fascinating land. Their culminating activity consisted of a Read and Learn Festival, which solely focused on what it would be like to go to Antarctica. Each student was encouraged to invite an adult guest, such as a parent or grandparent, to join in with them during the event.
The festival began in the school gymnasium where parents and their child sat snuggled on each child’s favorite blanket. The group was then treated to an interactive read aloud, but rather than using a book, the text was projected onto the “big screen,” for a movie theater type experience.
“Read alouds in school are a lot different than they were 20 years ago,” said Sarah Estabrook, a Literacy Coach at Houlton Elementary School. “We now know that students learn more from a book by interacting with it and talking about it, rather than just sitting and listening to it. We wanted to involve parents in an interactive read aloud, so we decided to think outside the box and put the book on screen to make it accessible to such a large group. Instead of students talking with a teacher about the book, they discussed it with their parent using our think-pair-share model.”
Following the read aloud, students and their guest rotated to six different interactive and informational learning stations.
“Each station focused on a different content area like math/science, literacy, writing, art, physical fitness and health/nutrition,” said Leanne Faulkingham, one of Houlton Elementary School’s Kindergarten teachers.
Laurine Wilson, another Kindergarten teacher added, “We felt it was really important to cover all the content areas, not only so that students would learn more about Antarctica, but also so that parents could have hands-on experience with our curriculum.”
Each station was not only informational, but also a lot of fun. Students and their guest created scratch penguin art at the art station, engaged in an ice-melting experiment at the math/science station and wrote about Antarctica at the writing station. If you happened to wander by the gym, students and their guest grooved to the penguin polka at the physical fitness station and followed up by learning about cold dairy foods, while taste-testing low-fat yogurt parfaits at the health/nutrition station. To wrap up, students and their guest learned even more about penguins and Antarctica by doing some non-fiction reading at the literacy station.
Five of the stations were led by a Kindergarten teacher, while the health and nutrition station was led by Lynn Brown, SAD 29 Health Coordinator.
“This festival provided a great opportunity to link literacy with healthy eating. Children were involved in an activity that demonstrated the importance of getting at least three servings of dairy every day. In addition, having parents there to share this information with was a bonus, since parent/community involvement is a key focus of the district’s Coordinated School Health Program,” said Brown.
After all six stations were completed, students and their guest headed back to their classroom, where each student received a penguin pack. Each pack consisted of a new book students could read with their parent, a bookmark, penguin pencils and other penguin prizes.
Ann Wilson, a Kindergarten teacher at Houlton Elementary School, was very excited about the event.
“I love helping students make connections between books and real life. This was an amazing connection for our students because our team was able to take a book and create an entire learning festival out of it,” she said.
The teachers were very pleased with the parent turnout and felt the event was a huge success. Daphna Harris, an HES Kindergarten teacher, was thrilled with how much her students learned about Antarctica, but felt the best part of the entire experience was, “…studying Antarctica in a variety of ways and then being able to share that experience with families.”
Becky Reed, another HES Kindergarten teacher summed up the event, “It has been a week I am sure none of us will ever forget!”
In the end, although the festival-goers couldn’t actually visit Antarctica, they would most likely agree with Antarctica’s first explorer, Amundsen, that the day was truly reminiscent of a fairy tale, where fun and learning lived happily ever after.