Penguins Penguins Everywhere!

Another Penguin themed day!

Are you getting tired of these cute little birds yet?

I've almost reached my saturation point and am looking forward to posting some Valentine themed crafts soon!

Here is a cute little Penguin Glyph.  You can print it from here.

And here is a little Penguin song I found.

Jillian LOVED it since one of the penguins is named Jill!

On Top of an Iceberg
(Tune: On Top of Old Smokey)
On top of an iceberg,
All covered with snow,
I saw my first penguin,
And I wanted to know.

Oh, is it a bird,
Or, is it a fish?
I looked at his feathers,
And knew which was which.

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
Which species are you?"
He said, "I'm an emperor,
And not a gentoo."

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
What's under you patch?"
He said, "It's an egg,
It's ready to hatch!"

I said, "Mr. Penguin,
Oh, where is your wife?"
"She's out in the ocean,
She'll be back tonight."

Said Mr. Penguin,
"Her name is Jill.
She's out in the ocean,
Feeding on krill."

The next thing I knew,
I heard a small peep.
And I saw a chick,
At the emperor's feet!

Tonight we had a PENGUIN themed dinner!

The kids waddled to the table and really got into the whole PENGUIN idea!

Sarah called her milk 'sea water' and {when she accidently dropped some food on her clothes} said, 'oh no - not on my nice tuxedo!'

We started with an appetizer of 'krill'.

 {cream cheese spread on ritz crackers with shrimp on top}

The main course was fish followed by.......

Penguin Pie for dessert!

We filled out this Penguin Pie worksheet that you can find here.

This worksheet teaches kids about similes......

My penguin pie is as COLD as ICE

My ice cream is as WHITE as SNOW

{I never knew that these popular sayings were called similes - I love learning with my kids!}

If you would like to read more about similes, idioms, and popular sayings check out this fun book by Loreen Leedy and see how many similes you get right!

{Chris got 12/14 correct - smart man I have!}

And that ENDS the week of PENGUIN posts!

Fraction Penguin Craft

 Here is great math activity {disguised as a craft} that I found at Almost Unschoolers. 

First cut some large black and white circles for the body and wings and then some small orange circles for the beak and feet.  You can have your child trace and cut our their own circles for practice.

Cut one whole black circle in 1/2 and then into a 1/4 for the wings.

Cut one whole white circle in 1/2 and then into a 1/4 for the belly.

{while cutting you can be chatting to your little ones about the fractions you are creating}

Repeat by cutting the orange circles into 1/4s for the beak and feet.

Add some googly eyes and you have a ....

Fraction Penguin!

Sarah called her penguin 'Quarter'.

Jillian insisted on adding eyelashes to her penguin and making a little baby penguin too!

And here is our sweetest little penguin - Nathan!

Iceberg Experiment and Penguin Snack

While reading 'Adventures of Riley - South Pole Penguins' the kids learned how only a small part of an iceberg is visible above water.  Here is a neat experiment to demonstrate this.  We made some 'icebergs' by squashing and squishing a paper cup and then filling it with water to freeze.

Here are the icebergs!

 

And here are the scientists!

Once frozen, we ripped the 'iceberg' out of the cup and plopped it into a glass bowl of water.  The kids were easily able to see that the biggest part of the iceberg is underwater.

Oreo Penguin Snack

I bought some Oreo cookies and was getting ready to make a snowman snack (that I will post about later), when Sarah said, 'Hey Mom, let's make these oreos into PENGUINS!'

What a great idea - why didn't I think of that!

Here is our little

Oreo Penguin

The eyes and beak are made from fruit snacks.

Yummy!

More Penguins!

  South Pole Penguins is a wonderful book that is quite interesting.  It had lots of facts in it that included some geography, biology, and ecology.  The best was it talked about penguin poop (called guano).  We all know that kids love potty talk - so Sarah thought this book was hilarious!  Jillian, however, was very sad to find out that the food web for penguins is changing due to global warming and that the penguins are not finding enough food.

{The Adventures of Riley is a series.  Some of the other books take him to Madagascar, the Amazon and South Africa.  We will definitely be checking out these books too!}

 Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Penguins

I attempted to make a fun penguin snack with things I had in the house. 

Yes, these penguins look a little bit sad, but the kids thought they were great!

{I was just happy the kids could tell they were penguins!}

1 cut a large marshmallow in half lengthwise and stack it on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet

 2 cut some of the sides off the top marshmallow to form a thinner head 

3 covered them with melted chocolate (the backs will not have chocolate on them)

4 take the marshmallow 'bits' that you cut off the head and use them for the white bellies

5 some fruit snacks we had in the house formed the feet, beak and eyes

6 put in the fridge (once out of the fridge you can trim off the excess chocolate)

Penguin-licious!

Penguin Math!

I'm going to make the next week of posting all about PENGUINS!  There are so many penguin related books, activities and crafts that I figured I would dedicate a whole week to that cute little bird in a tuxedo!

365 Penguins is really a math book.  It was a lot of fun to read, and if I can make math fun it will engage Sarah.  We both enjoyed this book.

Continuing with the math theme, I sat the kids down with some great penguin math and activity printouts.

As anyone with more than 1 child knows, it can be next to impossible to get a picture with all involved children looking and smiling at the camera.  I tried and tried and here is what we got!

Once the kids settled down they enjoyed the math sheets.  Sarah needed a little help to figure out the concept of Pascal's Triangle......

......but once she understood she was thrilled!

Matthew worked on counting the 'goldfish' in the penguin's belly.

Until Jillian changed the game and helped Matthew eat all the goldfish!

See you tomorrow for more PENGUIN fun!