I guess our snow unit worked some magic because we got ourselves two snow days last week! PTL! :) It messed up our penguin unit just a bit, so we didn't get to everything we had planned, but the kids really seemed to enjoy learning about penguins!
I thought since I have really slacked on photographing, that I would post ideas from previous years! We did many of these ideas this year. We also used my Penguin Unit!
Throughout the week, we read LOTS of nonfiction books about penguins and the kids were soooo into it! Here are my favorite nonfiction books to read to them...
We worked on fact and opinion a lot and made these anchor charts. Then the kids did some fact and opinion writing {along with a quick little craftivity!}.
{Photo circa 2011 :)}
Throughout the week, we focused on the following penguin vocab: rookery, brood pouch, creche, tobogganing, waddling, molting, porpoising, krill, and regurgitate. We had the kids infer what they thought regurgitate means. We gave them this sentence first: "Penguins regurgitate." They had to write what they thought it meant on a notecard. They were quick to tell us that it was hard to infer the meaning without clues :) Then we read their responses. Next, we gave them this sentence: "Penguins regurgitate their food." They were able to make better inferences. Then we found the meaning in one of our books! Needless to say, they were grossed out :) We made these vocabulary penguins to show our learning!
{Photos circa 2011 :)}
We ended our week making our Penguin Fact Books {from my Penguin Packet}. They each had to write at least 5 facts that they learned.
One actvity Amy and I did add was penguin measurement. We got ALL 47 of our kiddos together and split them into groups of three. Each group was assigned a penguin to make (we made all 17 species)! We gave them the penguin's height, and they had to work with their group to measure and make the penguin! They were SO CUTE! And the kids really worked well together!
And the most popular, the Emperor Penguin :)
Then in the afternoone, we taped the penguins around our classrooms, and the kids got to visit each penguin to measure it in inches and centimeters. They did AWESOME! They were all so engaged the entire time!
They recorded their data on this record sheet.
When we were all finished, we put all the penguins in order according to their heights.
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