Penguins

Right off our wild animal unit, we delved into a unit about one of my favorite animals...penguins!

Dramatic Play

It was more of a sensory play this time around, as I brought in the sensory table and filled it with penguins and "insta-snow." I left the snow a powder the first day, so the kids could watch me add water to watch the snow grow. They love this stuff and almost all 9 were crowded around this table the whole first day.



The second week, after we had learned about the difference between Antarctic and Arctic animals, I added another sensory table with water beads and polar animals from the North Pole. They loved this too and this tiny table was busy and crowded all week!


Art

Feather painting, white paint on black paper, with feathers as brushes. They also liked using them as quills to try to write.


"snow paint" shaving cream, white glue, and glitter


Epsom salt painting. I didn't get any pics, but they painted with a water/epsom salt mixture on dark paper, and once it dries, it leaves the sparkly salt crystals behind.

Small Manipulatives

Numbers and counters on the magnet board
 

Puzzles

Building link things (no idea what they're called!)
 

Large Group

We learned the song, Penguins on Parade, which I own on a cassette tape, so it's a little dated! They love it though, because we get to wear penguin masks and march/waddle like penguins around the room as we sing.

We learned the word, Antarctica and found it on our map and globe.

Day 1, after reading about penguins, we learned about the difference between animals at the North Pole (Arctic) and South Pole (Antarctic) and sorted our animal toys by where they live.


Day 2, we read a book about Emperor Penguins, and learned that the father penguins carry the eggs after the moms lay them and pass them to them. So, we practiced balancing "penguin eggs" on our feet, by using beanbags. The children had to walk a few feet to their partner without dropping their eggs, then pass it to the partner, who then got a turn to walk balancing the egg. I don't think any of our poor eggs would have survived on the ice, but as one of the kids pointed out, I think penguin feet are made to balance eggs, and ours aren't!

Day 3, we learned about how penguins stay warm in the cold. We read that they have oil on their feathers that makes the water run off of them. We did a simple experiment, combining oil and water, and learned that they don't mix. So, feathers covered in oil, would repel water instead of soaking it in. Then, we tried to fit 9 feathers into a 1 cm squared box on a piece of playdough. They were very crowded, and we learned that penguins have 9 feathers in every square centimeter on their bodies, so having so many feathers also helps keep them warm.

Wild Animals

At the request of some students who wanted to learn about bats, we did focus on bats the first day, then the rest of the weeks were focusing on a variety of wild animals, so we could hopefully touch on most everyone's favorites!

Dramatic Play
Week 1: bat cave. It wasn't super fancy, but a tent made a good cave. I have some bat posters I got at a teaching conference years ago, and finally got to use! I also hung bats from the tent ceiling (that didn't last-they were torn down and played with right away!) and put some other creepy crawly animals in the cave, like scorpions, snakes, and spiders. They enjoyed playing in here the 2 days it was up, but by the end of the 2nd day, I was ready for it to be done. They just did less playing and imagining they were bats, and more rough housing and knocking the tent over. It's a good 2 day center.



Week 2: Zoo. They loved this! I kinda set up cages with blocks, but they had to improvise and expand them a lot. I'm not sure why, but I hadn't expected them to want to pretend to the animals as much as they did. The zookeepers were super busy, rebuilding cages, chasing down their escaped animals and getting them back into their cages, and also feeding their hungry animals. They had a great time. They often lacked visitors to the zoo, since so many were animals, so I had to buy a lot of tickets and visit often. The stuffed animals were fun, but they liked the animal costumes and being the animals the most.






Blocks
Mini-zoo with small animals, then the second week, the zoo expanded into the blocks area.

I also had several animal puzzles and games on the shelf that got played with a lot. They especially loved playing animal headbands! It was hilarious to watch. They'd be giving someone clues, and another kid would just walk up and yell to them what animal they were. We're still catching on to asking questions and giving clues I guess!


Art

Bubble wrap roller painting. This was a fun new painting experience they really liked!


Play dough and animal cutters


Q-tip painting



Watercolors

Small Manipulatives

File folder games



ABC animal foam puzzles


Animal puzzles


Flat marbles and animal ABC pages from here


Animal lacing cards


Magnet board: pattern blocks with animal cards


Writing
Animal stickers

Outside
We finally have snow! I filled the colored water bottles each day, and they love going out and coloring and painting the snow. They especially like mixing colors with each other to make new colors. I just use old empty bottles like syrup, shampoo, ketchup, honey, etc. I found the ketchup bottles were a little harder for them to use, but they were able to do it if they squeezed hard enough.

Large Group
We learned 2 new songs, Going to the Zoo by Raffi, and The Elephant Song by Dr. Jean. And we learned the word "wild."
Day 1, we read Stellaluna. We learned about bats by watching a youtube video about them. I was most impressed that they eat so many bugs! I'm sure the kids only heard the part about vampire bats that feed off animals, and didn't pay attention to much else!
Day 2, we made a giant venn diagram on the floor, and sorted our toy animals by wild, domestic, or both.

Day 3, we read about and learned the life cycle of a frog.
Day 4, we read about animal habitats, then watched this Sesame Street clip about habitats. It doesn't get much better than Lin Manuel Miranda rapping. Then we took the toy animals, and sorted them into habitats by placing them by a picture of their home.

Small Group
We don't have Miss Kim coming anymore, with her new work schedule, so they are learning to work independently in one group, while another group works with me. It's going quite well!
One group drew and wrote in their journals about their favorite animal, while my group was practicing cutting a zoo animal wheel thing. The finished product wasn't a big deal, but practicing cutting was!
The next week, my group practiced numerals and counting with animal magnets. The other group worked on an ABC animal puzzle together.