IPY Day Flyers with Classroom Activities (PDFs):
IPY Launch
Sea Ice
Ice Sheet
Changing Earth
Land and Life
People
Above the Poles

Polar Oceans

October 2009 Polar Week

March 2010 Polar Week

All flyers for the above Polar Days and Week are available in other languages on the International Polar Day pages.

Icy IPY Activities
Here are some of our favourite activities, as Word documents, that you can download and try in your classroom. Please let us know what you think of them!

Many thanks to Louise Huffman (LH) and Sandy Zicus( SZ) for sharing their activities with us. Please also send any other favourites that you have to Nicola Munro, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .


Blubber Gloves; Fat Birds-Skinny Birds(LH)
Sediment Tubes (LH)
Polar Animal Adaptation (LH)
Penguin Family Reunion (LH)
Explorers Fuel - Gorp (LH)
Detecting CO2 (SZ)
Coriolis Activity (SZ)
Comparing the Arctic and Antarctic (SZ)
Climate Activities (SZ)

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!; explore the properties of water and ice by making your own ice cream!

Experiments with Snow and Ice; simple experiments investigating the properties of snow, ice, and water, melting and freezing.

Ice in the Solar System; in-depth inquiry-based activities based on the physical properties of ice and water.

Compare your School with an Arctic School; a fun inquiry project comparing the students school/town with those in the arctic.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 3, 2008 Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears Magazine This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 614-688-3485 NSDL Middle School Portal This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 607-255-2702 National Science Digital Library Online Magazine for Elementary Teachers Brings Polar Issues Into Classrooms Nationwide Columbus, Ohio-March 3, 2008 Blockbuster movies and even soft drink commercials have made our planet's polar regions and their inhabitants popular culture superstars. At the same time many peo...

Two eighth-grade students at James Monroe Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico are collaborating with staff at several Antarctic stations including; the Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer Stations to measure shadows. By comparing the length of shadow the sun casts from a one-meter stick at solar noon measured at locations experiencing either winter or austral summer these students are testing the "longer shadows in the winter and shorter shadows in the summer" understanding. Students have also arranged for several snapshot winter readings to be taken across the continental United States on solstice. Measurements h...

More feedback from IPY's Sea Ice Day... this time from Brazil. Miriam RC, a teacher at Colégio Puríssimo in Rio Claro in Brazil, writes: I must tell you about the International Polar Day here in Brazil. It was fantastic! At Colégio Puríssimo, about 380 students between 15 and 17 years of age joined together in the school gym to sing a song composed for the planet by one of the girls (the song had been previously rehearsed during my classes). Then some students and myself followed one of the chemistry teachers into the lab to do the ice experiment and learn more about sea ice. We were all very excited and happy!!! We're looking forward to the next IPY Day....

Celebrate the summer solstice and come and see the longest day of the year. Hourly images collected and recorded in the Windows Around the World program let us see and compare daylength from Hawaii to above the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, CA. The attached worksheet shows the images collected during the summer solstice in 2006. Summer_Solstice.pdf __ Thanks to Juanita Urban-Rich for this post: Juanita is co-developer of Windows Around the World, a web-based exchange program for elementary students that uses visual images. She will use this Blog to suggest ways you can ...

Ranges in Temperature The following activity explores the range in temperature reported by elementary school children in the Arctic throughout 2007 and the start of IPY. You can use this activity to compare the arctic to your town or to another town within the Windows Around the World program. This activity let's students see how the temperature changes through the winter and the spring and should lead to discussions on temperature change and how the sun and daylength can cause these changes. Seasonal changes in temperature occur through out the world. Using the temperature data reported by the students in the Windows Around the World program record the range of temperature experienced by the Arctic schools for each month in 2007. Remember the rang...

In the Windows Around the World program, we are using web cameras to collect visual images that are used as data. These images are stored in a database and can be used to see changes in day length through out the year in various places around the world. In the attached handout, I have created a matching excercise that lets students see the changes in Arctic day light and to practice using pie graphs. This worksheet is designed primarily for 4th-6th grades but it could be modified for older and younger students. If you wish to see other filmstrips, you can view them by going to the "Weather Archive" section of the site, located under the "Teachers' Resouces". In a daily filmstrip,...

The USGS Educational Resources Index for IPY let's you explore a variety of USGS resources on polar research, from maps and fact sheets to photographs and databases. Designed for researchers, students, teachers, and others interested in research and findings related to polar science, this index contains more than 65 different resources. To make finding information you're interested in easier, these resources are divided into eight categories: Alaska and the Arctic, Antarctica, Climate Change, Glaciers and Ice, Photographs, Satellite Imagery, Wildlife, and Other USGS Resources. Each entry is then broken down by three questions—What is it?,...

The sea near McMurdo Station, Antarctica, is -2° C, but the water is not frozen at that temperature. Why? In this activity, students can explore some of the properties of water and ice by making their own ice cream. MATERIALS: (per pair of students) 2 heavy duty ziploc bags per student—1 large and 1 small ½ cup milk 1 Tablespoon sugar ½ teapoon vanilla Ice salt 2 spoons 2 bowls DIRECTIONS: 1. Place the milk, vanilla and sugar in the small Ziploc bag and carefully close it, being sure there are no leaks. 2. Place the small bag inside the larger one. 3. Surround the small bag with ice to ½ the large bag capacity. 4. Give each pair of students a differen...

Water is a phenomenal molecule, and the International Polar Year offers an opportunity for us to revisit this element of life that we often take for granted, especially its crystalized and frozen state. Water is both remarkably simple (two parts hydrogen-- the first element in the universe, one part oxygen-- the eighth element) and amazingly complex; its behavior at the "triple-point," where it flickers between liquid, solid and gaseous phases, amazes even atomic physicists. Unlike other molecules, water is more dense in its liquid than solid states, which allows ice to float. Therefore, lifeforms can survive, even thrive, beneath the ice. Scientists studying global climate change and the impact of human activities on the climate and ecosystems pay particula...