We wrapped up our unit on penguins. I've been teaching for ten years now and I don't know why this was my first time to do a unit on penguins. They are so much fun! We kicked off our unit by watching March of the Penguins. I admit I didn't make it all the way through the movie, but then I rarely do now a days. One thing I did realize though is that compared to penguins, parenting my little humans is a breeze!
We spent the next week researching penguins - especially emperor penguins. We labeled a penguin and recorded what we learned on these sheets. We also explored the National Geographic Kids website for penguin information and some fun videos!
For our reading, we read a few non-fiction books we had checked out from the library. Our two favorite fiction books were One Cool Friend and Mr. Popper's Penguins. After reading Mr. Popper's Penguins we discussed what it would be like to have a pet penguin of our own. Using the writing process, "Miss Priss" also wrote an opinion piece.
We combined fine motor skills, colors, shapes and art together to create these awesome penguin pictures. I loved how unique these all turned out!
We wrapped up our penguin unit with a family fun night! We watched Mr. Popper's Penguins (which the kids and I were disappointed to learn that it was nothing like the book other than there is a Mr. Popper and he has penguins). We also made some penguin cupcakes and had a relay race. For the relay race we had to balance a ball between our feet and pass it off to our partner, much like the mom and dad penguins do. We couldn't let it "hit the ice" or it would break and we lost!
During our two week penguin study, we also did the letter "M" with my two youngest. The highlight being playing in the mud and making mudpies! We also made monkey puppets and had muffins and milk with Mom one morning!
Fun times! Now on to our snow unit!