Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: penguins

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Littles Learning Link Up: Penguin Unit- Lesson 3: Comparing Penguins of the World

Littles Learning Link Up is back on Tuesday!!

Each month you will find:

Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).
The occasional round up post.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

We are still working on geography with Let's Go Geography. Though in our history reading, we haven't gotten past China. Tabitha has gotten a few weeks ahead of us, because she does her reading independently. She has also started reading a book about George Washington from YWAM Publishing.The younger children and I will read through it slower, using the unit study that we received.

I'm working on Reading Comprehension with Hannah, using the PRIDE Reading Program. We also received some Early Reader Box Car Children books that Harold read quite quickly. I plan on him rereading at least one to do some sort of project with it.

Moving on to our preschool lesson:

We have been continuing with our penguin lessons.

We sing the songs I came up with every week.

Did You Ever See a Penguin (tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie)

Did you ever see a penguin, a penguin, a penguin

did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

Waddle this way and that way, waddle this way and that way

Did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

See the Penguins (tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb)

See the penguins standing there, standing there standing there

See the penguins standing there,

In Antarctica

They would go tobogganing, tobogganing, tobogganing

The would go tobogganing

Down the snowy hill.

Of course I have motions and movements for these like our songs from last year.

We also sang our snowy, winter songs from last winter.

We read the book Penguin and Little Blue by Katherine Tillotson.

In this book, Penguin and Little Blue are together in an aquarium and they end up going on "tour" throughout the United States. However, what Penguin really wants is to go back home to Antarctica to be with his own kind. At the end of the book they end up taking a ship there and Little Blue stays with Penguin.

This sort of led into a discussion of different penguins and how they live in different parts of the world. We learned that the blue penguin wouldn't have lived on Antartica, but over near Australia and New Zealand. I showed the children pictures of eight different penguins and we learned their names and where they lived, plus how tall they are.

I made little copies of each penguin picture for the children to glue onto a map I printed out and glued into a file folder.

We put the penguins where they live. It does make me curious how many people think all penguins live in Australia. Did you know the majority live on the islands north of Antarctica, and then there are those that live on the southern tips of South America and Africa?

Before the lesson I taped black pieces of paper together to represent the different penguins' heights.

Then, the children took turns measuring the "penguins" with my tape measure.

After we were done measuring each one, I hung it up next to the emperor penguin we made the week before. We didn't make the other ones into penguins because I wanted to be able to reuse the paper.

Then we began a salt dough hand penguin project that I had seen on Messy Little Monster. I had the children help measure and pour the ingredients for the salt dough. Then I kneaded it/

We gave the children a piece big enough to flatten out for their handprint.

It wasn't until two weeks later that they got to paint their penguins as most of our class was gone the following week.

They started out by painting the handprint white. The palm was the iceberg and the fingers were the penguins.

Then they painted the outer part blue for water, and we helped them paint the black outline and flippers, plus add feet and orange beaks.

Aren't they cute. Sadly, we had forgotten to poke a hole in the top while they were still soft, so they couldn't hang them up as planned.

The week that we only had a couple of children, we made lapbooks I had purchased from Mrs. Jones Creation Station to learn more details about penguins, such as anatomy, life cycle, where they live, what their prey is, and what preys on them, some more different types of penguins, and what they are, can do, and look like

Our unit wrapped up and we started a unit on Under the Sea.

Here are a couple of things I would like to share with you:

Penguins, Penguins All Around Round Up

Arctic Fun Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 6 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing a the most clicked on post, plus a randomly selected post.

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's most clicked on post is:

Gale from Imaginative Homeschool shared A Heart-Full Kindergarten Valentines Day.

This week's randomly selected post is:

Megan from My Full Heart shared ABC Jesus Loves Me: Year 1, Week 3

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

February Homeschool Round UP {Homeschool Collection}

Friday, January 31, 2020

Littles Learning Link Up: Penguin Unit- Lesson 2: Emperor Penguins

Littles Learning Link Up is now on Friday!!

Each month you will find:

Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).
The occasional round up post.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

In our history lessons we have been learning about Japan and China. We learned things I don't remember learning, like Japan's great leader, Hideyoshi and the first Tokugawa ruler. Then we looked at how Japan closed it's doors to all other countries except a select few. Then we started learning about China, reading about the Manchu conquest of the Ming Empire. The children have gotten to reenacting with their Lego blocks while I am reading.

That's really all that is new. The children continue to do their math independently and we try to fit English in.

Science is definitely being neglected a bit right now, though we have started working on some geography with Let's Go Geography, a new review product. We are skipping around in the program, so we can learn about countries we have focused on in our history reading. So, right now, we are learning about Japan. The children are watching different videos that have been linked and we worked on some map work and the flag.

Moving on to our preschool lesson:

We have been working on our penguin lesson.

We sing the songs I came up with every week.

Did You Ever See a Penguin (tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie)

Did you ever see a penguin, a penguin, a penguin

did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

Waddle this way and that way, waddle this way and that way

Did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

See the Penguins (tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb)

See the penguins standing there, standing there standing there

See the penguins standing there,

In Antarctica

They would go tobogganing, tobogganing, tobogganing

The would go tobogganing

Down the snowy hill.

Of course I have motions and movements for these like our songs from last year.

We also sang our snowy, winter songs from last winter.

We read the book The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins.

I thought it would be cute to make a penguin out of a toilet paper roll. But, I wanted a bit more. So, I decided to glue it to a paper plate, adding cotton balls for snow. Then I decided to wrap the paper plate up with foil first, to give it an icy feel. I then decided to finish it up with a white pompom on the penguin's feet for an egg. Because you know, Emperor Penguins incubate their eggs on the dad's feet under the flap of skin to keep them toasty warm.

Here are the materials you will need:

Paper plates

Foil to cover the plates

School glue

Construction paper (black, white and orange)

Cotton Balls

Paint brushes

Scissors

Black Paint

Toilet paper rolls

white pompoms (about 1/2 in)

Wiggle eyes

I love having children paint toilet paper rolls. All they have to do is hold it with one hand, sticking most of their fingers inside, and then paint with the other hand.

We set them aside to dry while the children went to snack and gym. When they came back they glued on the white bellies and black flippers.

While they were drying, the children worked on their snowy habitat. I had them start by pulling the cotton balls apart gently, trying not to separate them but keep them in long strands.

Then we glued them onto the foil-covered plate.

We left a section in the middle uncovered and then they glued on the penguins feet.

Then we put a bunch of glue down and glued the toilet roll penguins to it.

Last, we added the wiggle eyes and beak. I'm not sure if this would have been easier to do before gluing the penguin on. I did it afterward so they wouldn't knock it while attaching it to the plate, but then it was difficult to glue them on because they were standing upright.

We set them aside to dry and worked on making a life-sized emperor penguin. I used this opportunity to talk about measurements such as inches and feet.

I had already taped the black paper together and attached it to the wall. Then the children took turns adding different features.

Then the children took turns standing next to it to see who was taller, the child or the penguin. They learned that the penguin was taller than all of them. I then cut pieces of yarn in the children's heights for them to take home.

For our final activity, the children practiced standing with a hard boiled egg balanced on their feet.