Release week Nov. 5, 2006:  Climbing

Standards

• Geography: Students will locate mountains and nearby news events.
• Physical Education: Students will play a “glacier-walking” game.
• Physical Education: Students will report on a famous climber and watch a climbing video.

Activities

• Use the News:  Choose an article from the international news in your newspaper.  Then, locate the area in which the news event took place.  Finally, use the WOW mountain map or an atlas to find the closest high mountain. 

• To get an idea about what it’s like to travel across a glacier while roped together with several other climbers, you can play this game.  Bring a rope, string or yarn you can use as your “climbing rope.”   Next, decide on a travel route on your school grounds.  Possible routes could include balancing across a low curb or wall, or climbing in and around a play structure with slides, bars, rings and walkways.  The level of difficulty depends on the age of the students.  Finally, either tie a loop in the rope for each student -- small groups are best -- or just have each student hold the rope.  Each group must try to make it to the end without falling off or letting go of the rope.

• There are many famous mountain climbers apart from Sir Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay.  Do some research and learn who the other incredible women and men are.  Also, here is an online video showing just how extremely difficult a special type of climbing called “bouldering” can be.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2jHte0Zv5U&mode=related&search

World of Wonder meets many state educational standards.  This guide helps teachers identify standards and related activities generally intended for grade 6, but teachers can modify activities to the appropriate grade level.