Dec 2025 / Jan 2026
Frozen Fun!
Academic Standards
Reading Objective:
Students will identify different reasons that an animal is pink or red—from feeding habits to warning to defense.
Next Generation Science Standards:
K-LS1-1: What animals need to survive
K-ESS3-1: Why animals live where they live
1-LS1-1: How animals use parts of their bodies to help them survive
Vocabulary:
male, female, camouflage
Use your Science Spin to find the best answer to each question.
1. Why are flamingos pink?
They eat pink food.
2. Why is the pygmy seahorse pink?
so it can hide
3. Which type of cardinal is red?
male
4. Draw an animal using camouflage to hide in a garden of flowers.
© Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.
- Every winter, ice castles are created in several cold places around the country.
- It was all started by a dad who figured out how to build his kids an ice cave in their backyard.
- The cave looked so cool that people from all around came to enjoy it!
Materials: Copies of the skill sheet, pencils, and sticks and connectors for building. Sticks can be toothpicks, coffee stirrers, raw spaghetti noodles, thin pretzel sticks,etc. Connectors can be playdough, biodegradable packing peanuts, mini marshmallows, soft candy such as Dots, etc.
Overview: Instead of using icicles, kids build creations with small sticks like toothpicks. Instead of slush, they use clay, packing peanuts, or candy to connect them.
Directions:
- Set up workstations with enough sticks and connectors for each group.
- To start the lesson, remind kids that ice castles are built from icicles stuck together with slush.
- Demonstrate how they will build with sticks, connected with your chosen material.
- Explain that before engineers build the ice castles,they sketch a design first. Hand out the skill sheets for this. Send kids to the workstations to sketch and build.
- Can kids build their “castles” to match the sketches, or will they need to tweak the design? Engineers do this all the time!