We hit the ground runnin’ and jumped back into our classroom with two webbed feet! On Thursday we began a unit on penguins, and I should have taken more pictures!
First we filled out a K-W-L chart, noting what we already Know about penguins and what we Want to learn about penguins. After we complete the unit, we’ll fill out the third column to record what we Learned. Then we learned that there are 17 different kinds of penguins, and using a projector we visited this website — http://www.penguins.cl/penguins-species.htm — to see what they all look like, and to see where each kind lives. As we read about where each kind lives, we placed a sticker on our globe to represent that species. Once we were done, we noticed that there were NO stickers on the top half of the globe, and that all the stickers were on the bottom half of the earth. We talked about the equator, and how it is an invisible line that divides the world in half — that the top half is called the northern hemisphere, and the bottom half is called the southern hemisphere. (Later we also talked about titles of maps and the Compass Rose.) We saw that penguins live in the southern hemisphere! We also saw that not all penguins live in very cold regions, and that some are quite close to the equator (where it is warmer).
Once we saw that many penguins live in Antarctica, where it is extremely cold, we wondered how they could keep warm. We learned that they have two layers of skin: a layer of blubber and a layer of feathers. We went downstairs to the kitchen to learn more about blubber and how it keeps penguins warm. We filled a pan with lots of ice and some water, and put one of our fingers in it. Brrrrrrr!!! Then we used Crisco to coat a finger on the other hand, and put it into the water. We could have kept it there all day! Blubber sure helped keep us warm. On Friday we learned more about their feathers: first we figured out how to draw one square inch, then we looked at some feathers, and we found out that penguins have about 70 feathers attached to every square inch of their bodies — wow!
We learned that penguins are “flightless birds” (which tied in nicely with the concept of -ful and -less words in our language book!), but that they can rocket through the water, especially when returning to the land/ice. We watched this National Geographic video a couple of times since it was so cool to watch them launch themselves out of the water: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9mbCNs47FI. We also talked about their coloration, and how it might help camouflage them from predators; we made a penguin out of felt, and saw how it was hardly noticeable against the dark bottom of the (black felt) sea; and as we laid on the floor and looked up, we saw that their white fronts blended in with the light from the (ceiling) sky. We also talked about what penguins eat, and how they eat; it was especially gross and fun to learn how baby penguins eat. 🙂 We started reading Mr. Poppers Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater, and will begin making lapbooks this week.
So we’re off to a good start in our study of penguins! Even with all the wiggles in a just-back-from-vacation week, we accomplished quite a bit. Here is the secret to how we got our wiggles out so that we could concentrate on our studies: we partied like penguins! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zXGxo6mHLzc
Mrs. Elliott's Classroom 