This week we continued our exploration of penguins. After learning about the difference between facts and opinions, we wrote interesting facts about penguins and then turned our papers into big penguins. In science, we did an experiment with blubber and ice. We found out the importance of blubber first hand by testing our hands in cold water, one hand in a layer of blubber and in just water. We also experimented with ice and textures to see how well our slippery ice penguins slide down a slope. In math, we worked on graphing and analyzing a penguin’s favorite snack, fish. Well we had colored gold fish. We ended our unit by making penguins out of oreo cookies!
Monday:
We started reading by reviewing all of our letters, letter sounds, and sight words. Then we watched the letter K video before we completed our Letter Kk sorting worksheet. Next we reviewed fiction and nonfiction stories. Then we listened to two stories. We had to determined what kind of story they were. After our fiction story, Flip and Flop we identified the characters, setting, problem and solution of the story. We also completed a character and setting sorting worksheet. After our nonfiction story, Penguins, we identified some different facts about penguins. Next we started our writing project. We had to write some interesting facts about penguins. When we were writing we had to make sure to use a capital letter to start our sentence and a period to end a telling sentence. Since not everyone could work at the teacher table at the same time, only a few people worked on writing. The rest of the class worked on reading stations. Those friends that didn’t get their writing done today will work on it tomorrow.
In the afternoon, we had a second little snack, but we had a little work to do. We know that penguin eat fish, so today we did too. We ate colored goldfish crackers. Before we couldn’t eat, first we had to create a graph. We each got a handful of colored goldfish crackers. We sorted and counted each color of crackers. Then we colored our graph. After that we had to analyze our data. We each had to state 3 or 4 facts from our graph. Finally, we got to eat all of our goldfish!
In religion today, we listened to the story of Jesus’s baptism. We found out that his baptism wasn’t the same ours. He was baptized when he was an adult by John the Baptist. Then we colored the picture of St. John the Baptist in our Saint books. He is the patron saint of Puerto Rico and his feast day is June 24th.
Tuesday:
In reading, we were introduced to our 2 new sight words, they & for. After using them in sentences, we read through our new emergent reader, A Penguin is a Bird book. After reading it, we determined it is a nonfiction book because it is full of penguin facts. After discussing some of the penguin fact we heard, we listened to another nonfiction story, Penguins. It was full of some new interesting facts about penguins. Some of us were able to use that information to complete our writing project from yesterday while others worked on reading stations. Everyone completed our sight word worksheets. We ended our morning by playing sight word bingo.
After lunch, we completed our calendar binder before we were off to music and PE. When we came back we spent a little time playing some new math and reading games on the iPad.
Wednesday:
We had an unscheduled two hour late start today due to the weather.
We started our morning by reviewing our letters sounds, letters, and sight words. Then we watched the letter K video and completed our letter k worksheet.
In religion, we talked about baptism. When you are baptized, you join God’s family. It is the first sacrament you receive. It is called a Sacrament of Initiation. Next we talked about the 5 symbols of baptism and what each one means, the Sign of the Cross, water, chrism, white garment, and the candle. Then we colored a picture of a baptism. In it we were able to locate each of the 5 symbols.
In the afternoon, we completed a couple of different science experiments.
We started by testing out our mittens/gloves. First we tested to see if ice melted faster with a mitten on or without it. We each got one ice cube to hold in our hand with our mitten/glove. After two minutes nothing really happened. Then put the ice cube in our hand without our mitten. It started to melt right away. Next we put one of our warm glove on our right hands and one stretching glove from Ms. Torborg on our left hand. We held an ice cube in our left hand for 2 minutes. Our hand started to get cold pretty fast. Then we held an ice cube in our right hand. We found out that our hand stayed pretty warm after two minutes. We determined that when it is really cold or we are going to play in the snow, it is important to where warm gloves.
Next we worked with blubber. We know that Arctic penguins (and other polar animals) stay warm because of a layer of blubber under their skin. Today we got to “experience” how blubber works. We started with a bowl of COLD ice water. Ms. Torborg had a bag with “blubber” (really it was shortening). It was actually in between two bags, so we didn’t get it all over. We each took a turn putting our hands in the bowl. We put one hand in the blubber and one hand in just water. Our hand in the water got really cold fast and our hand in the blubber stay relatively warm.
Our last experiment had to do with sliding on the ice. We broke up into groups. Each group got a cookie sheet as their “ice”. We needed to figure out how to create a slope with it. Then we got an ice cube to use as our penguin. Our penguin easily slid right down our slope. Sometimes they slid right off our table.
Thursday:
We started our reading time out by learning how to write in our journals. We are going to use our journals to complete the write the room reading station from now on. First Ms. Torborg demonstrated how to write on lined paper. We need to make sure to that our letters are made the correct way with some letters touching the top line, some starting at the middle line, and even some going below the line. After we had a chance to practice, we took some time to complete the write the room reading station. Then we completed a word family sorting activity.
Today we got to have a special snack, but we had to make our own snack, cookie penguins. Before we got started, we created a list of the different parts of a penguin. Then Ms. Torborg showed us the supplies. We each needed ½ of an oreo with white frosting, ½ of an oreo with no frosting, 2 of the ¼ oreo pieces, 2 mini-m&m’s, 3 pieces of candy corn, and a little scoop of frosting. Our job was to figure out how to turn our supplies into a penguin making sure we had all of the different parts. When we were done, we got to eat our penguin. And boy were they good!
In the afternoon, we continued working on our penguin writing from early in the week. The people who did not finish their writing met with Ms. Torborg and the rest of the class worked on reading stations. When everyone was done, we turned our writing projects into a penguin. The body of the penguin was the writing project that contained our interesting penguin facts. The first step was to lay out the tracing patterns on our paper. We had to make sure all of the patterns fit before we traced the pieces. Then, we cut them out. Finally, we glued them together. We really had to listen to the specific directions Ms. Torborg gave us in order for it to look like a penguin.
In math, we complete a hundreds worksheet by filling in all of the missing numbers from the hundreds chart. Then we played some of the math games we have been working on.
Friday:
In reading, we used all of the penguin facts we have learned to complete a penguin sentence worksheet. Our job was to complete each fact sentence using one of the words at the bottom of the page. We really had to work hard using our decoding skills to figure out each of the words.
In the afternoon, we worked on coloring some special hearts that will be hung up in the big window in the front of school.
We wrapped up our penguin unit with the Disney Nature movie Penguins. The video was all real footage, but the story line was made up. It follow an Adelie penguin through a year of his life. As we watched, we were able to identify many of the penguin facts were learned in the last 2 weeks.