Antarctica Activity Pack: Maps, Stations & Food Webs, Grades 3-5

Take your class to the coldest, driest, and windiest place on Earth — no parkas required. This 30-page Antarctica Activity Pack for Grades 3-5 follows scientists to the frozen continent at the bottom of the world, mixing short reading passages with map work, data skills, and puzzles, so it can fill a week of science and social studies centers or serve as a ready-made sub plan.

Students start by labeling a simplified map: the Antarctic Circle, the South Pole, the Southern Ocean, McMurdo Station, and Palmer Station. Six original reading passages build knowledge step by step — the frozen continent and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, a day at a research station, Antarctic animals, seals, whales, and krill, polar day and polar night, and ice, glaciers, and icebergs — each with comprehension questions. A true-or-false and fill-in-the-blanks page checks the facts, and a station jobs match, a pack-your-bag activity, and an order-the-day sequencing task show how scientists live and work on the ice.

Comparison and data pages keep the maths honest: an Emperor versus Adélie table uses real sizes (115 cm against 70 cm) with a subtraction problem, a food-web page orders chains from tiny sea plants through krill to penguins, whales, and leopard seals, and a seasons-flip table shows why January is summer in Antarctica. Two temperature pages use clearly labeled EXAMPLE data only — never presented as real readings — for a bar graph and a two-place comparison with difference and counting questions.

Five puzzles close the pack: a 12-word word search, a 10-word crossword with numbered clues, a 10-question quiz, a word scramble, and a fix-the-mistake review, plus a design-your-own-research-station project. Complete answer keys on pages 26-30 cover every activity. Print-and-go on US Letter paper, black-and-white friendly, with nothing pre-filled on the student pages.