Penguins, Polar Animals and some other fun activities!

We’ve been learning about penguins and polar animals the last couple of weeks at school. First, we talked about penguins and I introduced some new vocabulary.  I’ve really been trying to focus upon increasing the overall vocabulary of my students, so I made some of these cards here:

January vocabulary

Each day I introduced a fact about penguins to my students.  By the end of the week, they helped me fill out a cloze activity about the facts that we learned.  Students also helped me to make a large penguin that we used to write our facts on.  Here is a picture:

My students also did a cut and paste penguin activity, then they measured their penguins with unifix cubes when they were all done.  They recorded their responses on a sheet of paper.  Just in case you are wondering, I often use highlighter for my students to trace the words.  Most of my kiddos are not able to independently write, and this was suggested at a handwriting workshop that I attended earlier in the fall.

I got the penguin measurement idea from Mrs. Larremore’s Chalk Talk blog and changed it to fit this project.  If you would like a copy, then you can download it here:  penguin measurement.

By the way, Mrs. Larremore also posted a compilation of  penguin ideas here.  The top picture on page 13 of her unit features a picture from the handprint poem page for the month of January!  Whoop!  I was sooooo happy to see that!  So, I’m posting the January poem page for you to print if you want to make this project too:  January hand print poem page.

I know that I’m starting to sound like a Chalk Talk groupie, but April Larremore seriously posts some great ideas!  She also posted about the book, Mama Do You Love Me? here.

We made some construction paper Eskimos too, that turned out adorable!

Then we added writing similar to April Larremore’s post.  You can get a copy of the papers that we used for writing and review the sight words here:

Mama Do you Love Me project part 1

Mama Do you Love Me project part 2

We also finished the Eskimo sight word page from Heidi Songs.  My students had so much fun singing the songs as they colored!  By the way–have I mentioned how much I LOVE Heidi Songs!  If you don’t own any of her sight word CD’s or DVD’s, then buy some!  They are fantastic!  I can’t wait to buy more to use with my students!  Any way, if you want to download the Eskimo sight word page, then you can find it at the bottom of her blog post here.

Well, that’s all that I have for now, but I hope that you found some useful ideas for use with your little kiddos!  Also, don’t forget to check out the Penguin page here for lots of links and ideas to use with your winter units:  Penguin Thematic Unit.

 

~Barbara