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.

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 Patterns • Africa • Antarctica • Asia • Europe
North America • Oceans • South America

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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.

Materials I Used

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

Felt from American Felt & Craft – white, salt & 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

I am so excited to introduce you to make latest big project! Those of you who follow along on Facebook or Instagram have already seen a lot of fun sneak peeks. Plus, it was YOU who voted on the Facebook page to make a world map the next quietbook project!

This project will be presented a little different than normal. Because it is SO BIG, I’ll be giving you a chance to sew along with me by posting a great deal of the patterns today. I am creating each piece by hand and then drawing up patterns from the finished product, so some elements will be provided in later posts.

Overview and Map Patterns • Africa • Antarctica • Asia • Europe
North America • Oceans • South America

The Plan

Today I am giving you the massive pattern for the world wall map and the continent puzzle pieces that can be attached to it. I also included the cover text for quietbook stores all the pieces. Here is pattern. [The pattern was updated 07/24/13 to add the water beside Baja California on North America. Sorry I forgot it!] And here is a pdf with the continent and ocean labels that get printed onto printer fabric. There will be additional posts for the other continents that will include patterns for regional animals and landmarks.

Materials

Felt: I am mainly using scrap felt to create the continents and smaller pieces of this project. The beautiful wool blend felt I get from American Felt and Crafts is just too good to waste! So I am digging into my scrap basket and using all I can. However, this project does require some larger cuts of felt. I ordered 1 yard of “Swan” blue felt from Benzie Designs. This was used to make the 34″ x 18″ wall map and then three 12″ x 18″ pages for the quietbook. I also ordered a 12″ x 18″ sheet of “Peacock” aqua blue felt for the cover, 2/3 yard of white (you only need enough for the long strip version of Antarctica, but I bough extra for other projects) and 1/3 yard of “Peppercorn” tan for the wall map continents. The continents are in traditional Montessori colors including: white, orange, pink, red, green, yellow and brown. I will eventually buy some backing felt or fleece for the back of the map to finish it off, but I have a few little bits to finish sewing first. Note – Antarctica is sewn down to the wall map due to the map projection. But I did also make a continent piece in its actual shape. You just can’t place it on the map.

Other: If you plan to print out the continent and ocean labels, you’ll need printer fabric. I use a roll that I can cut down to use in my 4″ x 6″ photo printer when I just have a little bit to print. I’ve also seen sheets for sale. For the pockets in the back of the book, you’ll need clear vinyl. I get mine in the home decor department of the fabric store. I am using felt glue this time around to lightly tack down small felt bits before sewing them. It is working out great! I have that exact kind, but found a better price in the craft store. I will be adding some closures to the quietbook – two buttons and some elastic cord loops. I’m still looking for the right ones. The big thing you need… hook and loop! I use snag-free Velcro inside the quietbook and on backs of all the loose pieces. It won’t fuzz up your felt when you close the book or store the pieces together. I also use a lot of colored hook and loop. I use the soft loop side on the fronts of the continents (for the animals and landmarks to stick to). For a stronger hold on the wall map, I used the hook side. This means I will have to put some tissue paper over it if I ever roll or fold it for storage to avoid fuzzing up the felt. I got this turquoise hook and loop for the ocean. The tan Velcro is sold with black and white Velcro in the store. All the novelty colors are available from AFC. I didn’t have the best match in orange, but I am using pieces from my stash.

Felt Wall Map

This piece is not yet finished (it needs a backing and loops at the top), but it is almost there! To make it, cut out all the large pieces and arrange them on the blue backing. Use a thin layer of glue to tack them down. Too much glue will make it tougher to sew through. Then cut out the zillion little islands and glue them down as well. I cut mine free-hand. I didn’t feel like it had to be super accurate at that scale – the overall effect when they are all in place is good enough! Once everything is glued down and dry, sew around all the edges. I used “Dual Duty Button & Carpet” thread in tan. Worked great!

I updated this 8/6/13 to add one more ocean Velcro piece in the Pacific near Hawaii!

After that, sew strips of hook and loop on to the map where indicated in the above photo. The ocean ones are for sea animals, the land ones are to hold the continents. I will eventually sew a backing on with some hang loops at the top.

Quietbook

I have started this, but it is only about half done. To start the book, I stacked the 12″ x 18″ sheets with the cover piece on top, then sewed a dashed running stitch through the center. I then folded along the stitching to make the book. Once the sewing is done, each page is made by sewing two layers together. I have the first and last (cover) pages done in these photos.

I will go into more detail later, but the cover has the title letters sew on (“of the” is back stitched), and the last inside page has two clear vinyl pockets sewn on – one for animals of the world and one for labels and landmarks.

The pages will be sewn with dotted outlines and snag-free Velcro so you can match and store the continents. Some pages will have more than one continent, as shown.

I came back to this post after finishing the continent pieces so I could share the final positions of the loop Velcro. Africa’s and North America’s are already posted in their patterns. See the rest above.

Montessori Continent 3-Part Cards

Jax just started his world continent unit with these 3-Part cards I made up for him. Click here to download my free pdf file to make your own. To make min, I cut them out, glued them to card stock then laminated them. I’m loving my new laminator!

So far, I am presenting them to him to introduce the names and shapes, and we are matching them and finding them on the felt map. As he learns the names, he can start matching the labels to the pictures. Once all the felt continents are done, we will use them with the cards as well.

World Animals & Landmarks

One of the most exciting parts of this project is still to come… I’ll be making little felt animals and world landmarks that can be placed on the continents and matched to the beautiful miniature replicas made by SafariLtd! I’ve been slowly collecting each TOOB I’ll need whenever I have 50% off coupons or store credit. They are so neat that I want to play with them myself!

Shopping List

I’ll be working with SafariLtd to bring you a great giveaway at the end of this project, so stay tuned!

I hope you’ll sew along with me!

For more great Montessori ideas, visit: