FIAR - Very Last First Time

Very Last First Time, by Jan Andrews is about an Inuit girl that goes under the frozen ocean when the tide goes out, to collect mussels, for the first time by herself.  There are parts of this story that frightened my children, but for the Inuit people who collect mussels to survive, it is very realistic of what they face!

Youtube has some videos of what it is really like to go under the seabed, and the dangers the Inuit people face in order to feed their families. We also watched some one making an igloo. Some of the videos we watched included:

• Race Against the Tide
• Video of the Inuit People
• Ducks Diving for Mussels
• Throat Singing "Dog and Wolf"
• Sesame Street - Ookyook Song

For activities, we

• Made a paper mache igloo
• Completed a polar bear painting
• Played an Inuksuk file folder game
  
•  Made our own Inuksuk
  
• Completed a Pointelle painting (painting with dots)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Made a Tidepool craft
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Completed a Tidepool Science Project
  
  

We studied:

• Inuits
• Throat Singing
• Igloos
• Polar bears
• Inuksuks
• Pointelle painting
• Tidepools

Extra books included:

• The Polar Bear Son - An Inuit Tale, by Lydia Dabcovich
• Polar Bears (National Geographic Kids)
• Snow Bear, by Jean Craighead George
• Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, by Eric Carle
• I is for Inuksuk, by Mary Wallace
• The Seaside Switch, by Kathleen V Kudlinski
• In One Tidepool: Crabs, Snails, and Salty Tails, by Anthony D Fredericks

 For our dinner to go with our book, we ate some steamed shrimp, corn on the cob, and asparagus