Penguin Love and FREEBIE

Penguins, penguins everywhere!! I absolutely love these darling little creatures, don't you? I know my first graders do, too. There is so much to learn about them and it's so easy to incorporate all subject areas. Wow at the resources available out there!

I started with an anchor chart called "What Do You Think?"  The kids responded to 3 questions by writing a simple YES or NO: Can penguins fly? Do penguins have feathers? and Do penguins live at the North Pole?
We had a great discussion about how we already had some schema for penguins in our brains but that schema might change as we learned and studied more about them. (Note: Nearly all of the students said the penguins lived at the North Pole!)

Next, I introduced students to the wonderful author, Helen Lester, who wrote the Tacky series. We are going to read lots of fictional books about penguins as well as non-fiction so we can contrast the difference between the two types of books. I found an awesome link of someone reading the first Tacky book online that is perfect for showing on the Smartboard if you have one.






Then of course we created our Glyph Girls' Penguin Glyphs to hurry and get something up on that post holiday empty bulletin board out in the hall. I love these little critters because with the little red hearts on them I can leave them up until after Valentine's Day if I want to! 

Click here to go to our Teachers Pay Teachers store and purchase the Little Penguin Glyph with Writing Options!

Here's a short and sweet freebie for you that I made for my Word Work Station. It's an ABC order worksheet with a Penguin Theme.
Click on the pic to download.
 

We also learned this super fun Jack Hartman penguin song that was perfect for some indoor recess activity. It looks a little cheesy, but I kid tested it and it was a BIG hit! More to come!