Carolyn's Classroom: Penguins

January can be a hard month to get through... especially after the exciting "ber" months! This week in our first grade class we have been reading about Animal Groups in our Journeys Reading basal. To go along with the reading selection we have been learning about Penguins. Kids love penguins! These are some of the books I am using.

I especially love the book Penguin Chicks! I went through this book and marked all the words we were going to be using in our Penguin Glossaries and as I read to the students we would stop and write the penguin "words" on the board and I would have the students define them in their own words. I wrote the brief definition they told me under each word. The students then made their own tiny glossaries that they folded from a piece of paper. They glued the penguin words into the glossary in abc order and wrote the brief definitions. They were encouraged to go home and test their families' penguin knowledge! Here is a copy of the glossaries and the penguin words we used. Believe it or not - the students LOVED making these!

We also talked about the parts of a penguin, including the babies' down feathers and how the feathers need to stay dry. We used a penguin labeling sheet and a baby chick folding book that talks about the brooding patch and has the students glue a paper flap over the chick tho show the parent penguin keeping its chick warm.

In the picture above there is also a True and False flap book that I use at the end of the week to test the students' knowledge of penguins.

Another activity we did to get everyone out of their seats was to pretend to be penguin fathers! We went out into the hall where I gave everyone an Easter egg. They were challenged to place the egg on the top of their feet - if a penguin egg touches the ice the chick can die. The students then had to carefully walk with the egg on their feet - it was pretty funny. :)

Some of the other things we have planned this week are to go into the gym to use the scooters to have penguin tobogganing races! That should be a great moment to get our wiggles out.

We are also going to do a little creative writing. The students are going to imagine that they are a penguin of course! The first thing we will do however, is think of some fancy adjectives that we can use in our writing.

We will use the above sheet to think of eight adjectives about penguins. I ask the students to pick a few of their favorite adjectives that they came up with to use in their writing.

After we finish writing and correcting our work to have it "hall hanging ready" (our neatest work, correct grammar, and spelling) we then complete the craft, attach our writing and hang it!

This penguin is made from a piece of paper formed into a tube. A little 3-d action!

Next week the students get to choose a penguin to research. This sounds a little crazy for first grade but it can be done! There are a number of ways to tackle this. You can bring in ipads or go to the computer lab. I find it easier at this young age to copy off the information I find on the Internet or from books, staple it together based on the penguin, and highlight important details for them. I then separate them into groups based on what penguin they are studying so that they can research as a team. I then give them copies of the packets with the highlighted information that pertains to the penguin they are researching. Putting them into groups makes it easier for me as a teacher to float around and help them as well. They then have a report booklet that has questions about their penguin that they need to answer. For example: size, where they live, predators, interesting facts, what they eat. They also have to draw a picture of what their penguin looks like. This report then acts as the circular white belly of a penguin that we can now put together and hang proudly in the hall.

If you are interested in any of these fun work sheets or projects, you can find them on my TpT store in a product called Penguin Party! It sells for $3.