Antarctica Unit for Kindergartners - Part 2

Better late than never...Here is the last part of the Antarctica Unit for Kindergartners (works for Pre-K too if you adapt to their range of knowledge)! Ready for more penguin-oriented fun? (Looking at all these activities, I feel like this unit might as well have been called "penguin week"!:) ) As the kids get older though, I hope to go in deeper...

Learning & Revising Shapes with the Penguins!

Basic shapes have been know for many years by my son but we're still working on remembering which is the pentagon, hexagon and octagon. These penguins (Teach With Me Freebies) were perfect to revisit the topic. I ran out of black construction paper (I really need to buy a pack of just black...) so they ended up being colored but other than that they still served their purpose.

Sub-Zero Temperatures & Clip Cards

Yet another activity recycled from last year's Weather week (initially printed the clip cards from Making Learning Fun). This time, I used "below zero" temperatures since these are the kind you'd be likely to encounter in Antarctica. Mini clothespins were used to mark the correct temperature indicated by the mercury. It was an excellent fine motor activity. These pins are truly tiny.

Dot-to-Dot and pencil control

A dot-to-dot penguin using numbers that are higher than usual. We don't do too many dot-to-dot here but I thought it'd be fun to include this one as the numbers didn't stop at 20 for once but also to check on his pencil control. Once the lines were established, I let Adrian decorate the penguin according to his chosen species. As you can see he opted for the Rockhopper kind.

Counting penguins living in each colony - by tens

Counting penguins 0-90 using the golden bead materials. Only the golden beads were used this time as we were reviewing the tens only. Adrian counted the penguins manually and every time he had ten, he would put a bar in the box next to the penguins. In the end, counting the bars told him how many penguins lived in that specific colony and he'd write down that number.

How tall are penguins?

How tall am I compared to a penguin? Penguins look small but are they really? Are they all the same size? Adrian seemed to assume so, so we took out the pictures of our Antarctica penguins, our measuring tape and measured on our wall the average height of each species, which he read to me from a slip of paper Id' given him. Together we measured that number on the wall and taped the picture of the penguin measuring that height. Then, we measured my son, who was just slightly shorter than the average Emperor penguin...The thought of these penguins being about his height if he walked next to him seemed surreal. If we go to Antarctica, I might just dress him up like an Emperor penguin to let him mingle! :)

Parts of a penguins - Cut & Paste

I usually put together a booklet and three part cards for "parts of a..." for the children but for this unit, I simply ran out of time. Thankfully, Kindergarten Crayons had a free printable so I simply used it (mine didn't print correctly so I had to write in the parts myself). It did the job and my son enjoyed the cutting and gluing part. Coloring the entire penguin was also an added bonus of course!

Paper Plate Penguin Craft

Cutting paper has been THE activity here lately. My son loves it and spends hours cutting so I thought he'd enjoy trying his skills onto a paper plate. Done exclusively with a big and small paper plate, paints and brushes (goggly eyes if desired), this penguin craft (an idea I first saw on Craft.Jr.) was the highlight of his week. Prior to the cutting process, I drew with a pencil, lines showing where the cuts should be made. The entirety of the two plates were used except for two tiny pieces. Once Adrian was through with the cutting, it was on with the painting, and finally, with the gluing. He was very proud to have done it all by himself.

Paper Plate Penguin Craft in Progress

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This week, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Preschool Corner &5K, We Made That.