Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

If you haven’t been introduced to our Montessori wall map and quiet book yet, you can read all about it here. This post is for the fastest continent to sew for – Antarctica! Every continent (and the oceans) will have landmarks and animals. Some, like Europe, have more landmarks than animals. Antarctica just has two animals featured, as there are mainly just seals, penguins and other birds.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Antarctica was a bit different than the rest in another way: it is the only continent that is hugely affected by the map projection. On the wall map, it is shown as a long, unraveled strip at the bottom. So Antarctica is sewn to the map, but I also made a piece in its actual shape that Jax can compare to it or to his globe.

Overview and Map PatternsAfrica • Antarctica • AsiaEurope
North AmericaOceansSouth America

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Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

My pyramids are still missing… Time to sew a new one!

Those of you who follow along on Facebook or Instagram might have seen there was a bit of a mishap in Antarctica. Well, the Antarctica in our house, at least. Our golden retriever got a little too excited about my penguin and ate him! Since I had to sew him a second time, I made him even cuter. He now is a daddy penguin with a little chick!

Regardless of that excitement, I still love working on this project! This will be an amazing resource for Jax throughout his school years. Yes, I am giving you all my patterns and printables for free! If you’d like to contribute, visit my support page. School items off of Jax’s Amazon wishlist always help! Especially because our heating/cooling unit just just freaked out and flooded our basement. We are now $6k poorer, despite insurance help. Yikes. I am currently saving up Amazon credit for the handbells on his wishlist. If I can get those, I’ll share a music unit with you all! but it looks like I won’t have enough until the end of September.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Materials I Used

The Pattern (see the first post for the main patterns)

Felt from American Felt & Craftwhitesalt & pepper [dark gray], elephant [med gray], black, rubber duckie [yellow] and gray.

Hook & Loop – I used white snag-free Velcro on the backs of all these pieces and on the Antarctica puzzle piece.

Felt glue to tack down the pieces before sewing, printer fabric for the continent label, embroidery floss in colors to match the felt and micro tip scissors.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Shown here on the quietbook page that Antarctica will share with South America.

Sewing the Pieces

Antarctica: (Felt used:white) For the Antarctic continent puzzle piece, I sewed down pieces of white snag-free Velcro. On the back, I sewed a strip of white snag-free Velcro to correspond with the Velcro in the quietbook. I finished it by sewing the two sides together around the edge with a blanket stitch.

Label: (Felt used: white) For the continent label, I folded under the edges (just a tiny bit to hide the rough edges) and creased it with my nails. The printer fabric held the folds nicely without ironing. Then I stitched the label to some white felt and trimmed it down to be a border. I cut a matching felt rectangle for the back, sewed snag-free Velcro to it and then sewed both sides together.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables  Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

For all of the animals, I started by gluing the pieces down to a scrap of background felt with a very light amount of felt glue. I glue multiple animals at a time to give them time to dry. I sewed them down, trimmed the background and cut a matching backing piece. I sewed snag-free Velcro to the back and sewed both sides together with a blanket stitch.

Penguin: (Felt used: white for the body and background, black for body details, elephant for the shoulders, gray for the chick and rubber duckie yellow for the neck) I started by gluing down the shoulders, the gluing the black wings to the back of the white body. I glued the body down over the shoulders, then glued the neck, feet and head. I then glued down the two parts of the baby chick penguin.

I sewed down all the edges with matching thread. For the baby, I sewed two long, dark gray stitches for wing flaps. I made French knot eyes then highlighted them with a ring of white stitches. The daddy penguin got a dark gray French knot eye.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Leopard Seal: (Felt used: white for the background, salt & pepper dark gray for the back and flipper, and gray for the body) I first glued the gray body down, then added the darker back and flipper. To make the spots, I just made lots of little stitches. The tiny spots are just one stitch. The larger ones are a few stitches side-by-side. She has a French knot eye, a little stitch nose and a longer stitch mouth. On the tail and flipper, I made long dark gray parallel stitches.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Montessori Antarctic Animals 3-Part Cards

Jax is still focusing on his world continent unit with the world continent 3-part cards I made up for him. We are using our Montessori globe and singing the continent song I made up. So far, He can point out the continents I ask for, and he can usually tell me the names of Africa ans Antarctica without prompting. We’ve also started using the ocean cards a lot. For the animals, we haven’t done a lot of formal lessons yet. We will when we focus on a continent. For now, we pull out our SafariLTD’s TOOB figurines and use out 3-part cards to match them whenever he shows interest. We like to watch short videos about an animal, then study some pictures and draw our own.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

These Antarctica cards don’t really have a good match in figurines. I would LOVE if SafariLTD would create continent-themed TOOBs! (Contact them if you are interested too!) You can match the Penguins Toob to their penguins. They don’t have any antarctic seals. Mine is from the craft store where they sell diorama supplies. I mention it in more detail in my ocean homeschool post.

Click here to download my free pdf file to make your own. To make mine, I cut them out, glued them to white construction paper (to match Antarctica’s Montessori color) then laminated them. I love my new laminator! It makes everything so shiny and strong!

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

Exploring Antarctica’s Animals

One thing that came of our basement flood – I had to move all our books out of the bookshelves and I found my The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide!

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

It has a lot of beautiful photos and useful facts about many different animals. Jax and I will be using it to match up with our 3-part cards and read more about the animals.

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

I didn’t notice until after I took these pictures that there is a penguin called a “jackass penguin“. Oh my! Poor little penguins!

Screenshot courtesy Google Earth.

Screenshot courtesy Google Earth.

I have Google Earth installed so Jax I I can explore the earth. It is great! If you’d like to load a special Antarctica map with all sorts of points already saved, visit this site. Make sure you have Google Earth installed already!

Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

I hope you are enjoying this project as much as I am! I’ve gotten see the maps a few of you have started! If you are sewing along, stop by my Instagram @iolstephanie and leave a comment on one of my photos (I can’t see your photo if it you are private, but I can request to follow you temporarily if you leave a comment about it) or share photos on Facebook. You can also email me.

It’s not even slightly Montessori Monday still, but I hope you’ll check out the other great links!

Montessori Monday

21 thoughts on “Animals of Antarctica for the Montessori Wall Map & Quietbook with Printables

  1. Jamie M

    Thanks for the patterns! I have been working on mine but i am way behind you. I figure it will take me a few months to get it done. Also I wanted to let you know that the “free PDF file” for the Montessori Antarctic Animals 3-Part Cards is not working. I posted a blog about you and you website if you want to check it out! I created a board on Pinterest with you creations and I have been getting a lot of repins!

    Reply
  2. Ana

    Sorry, but I have a doubt.

    When Jax sings the song “montessori continent song” he says, 7 continents … but there are 5. Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania … Australia is not a continent, at least for me. And the story as one America, not two (in any case they forget America center).

    Reply
    1. Stephanie Post author

      We learn 7 continents in the United States, but I did read about the variation taught around the word. Very interesting! I actually like the idea of Oceania better than just Australia, but I am teaching Jax what he will study in public school later on.

      Reply
      1. Ana

        I did not know it was different … I thought it was the same in all countries. I understand that you teach what you will learn in school. I guess it will be like with the international metric system not used in the U.S. (and the UK, Australia and I think in Canada) itself instead in other countries.

        Reply
          1. Ana

            Also I have looked at home in the same place (just in my language), I’m from Spain.

            Thank you very much for sharing all that you do for your child, and also we can follow their adventures in their “studies”.

            Usually saw in the series / movies (before knowing the network) mothers teaching their children, but since it enters the network, I see that is common. Also known the quietbook (unknown to me) and the amount of things that you doing with the needle (sewing).

        1. Claudy

          Hello,
          A few weels back I started Geography with my kids and there are so many different ways continents are taught, I can remember 5, 6 and 7
          And even in 5 and 6 some make the divisions different.
          We live in Central America, which is not a continent, it is part of North America (by the way the montessori Quetzal, native to Guatemala, Central America is in pink South America, ugh).
          But I would suggest adapting to what is taught in your native country and talk about the deffinition of continents and how it varies in different places of the earth.
          I think I learned Eurasia and later Europe and Asia
          Hope it helps.

          Reply
  3. Deb @ Living Montessori Now

    I always look forward to seeing your next part of this amazing project, Stephanie! Thanks so much for all you share! I featured your post as the Free Printable of the Day at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page and on Pinterest.

    Reply
  4. Shirley Gilchrist

    Your projects are a delight! I lam especially enjoying your continent projects. It was sad to read the fate of the first penguin.
    Unfortunately, I receive error messages and have been unable to load the animals pdf file.

    Reply
      1. Shirley Gilchrist

        I tried it again and it worked! Thank you! It will be a few months before I start working on the wonderful felt projects for my grandson, but I’m looking forward to it.

        Reply
  5. Liz Aguilera

    Hola, me encanta tus proyectos y agradezco la oportunidad de hacer uso de los materiales.
    realmente los niños y yo los estamos disfrutando.

    Reply
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  7. Shannon

    I am loving all your creations. I have tried to download from various links for the “animals of the antartica” and I keep seeing an error message.

    I was wondering whether you could please check this.
    Thank you

    Reply
  8. Svetlana

    This is wonderful <3.Tank you very much for inspiration 🙂 I have one question. I haven't find pattern for continent. Do you have it for download. Thank you very, very much. Best regards <3 <3 <3

    Reply
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