Penguins!

After 75 days in school, we are finally on winter break! The kindergarteners have been working so hard for the past four months, and it will be a well-deserved break for them. Hope you all have a great break! Here's a glimpse at what we've been doing in science lately: learning all about penguins!

We started off the unit with several questions and formed hypotheses based on what we thought. Then, like scientists, we researched the answer by looking at lots of penguin books. Turns out penguins DON'T fly, but they DO have feathers! The feathers help keep them warm.

We then learned that there are 17 different types of penguins, including the great Emperor penguin, the tallest penguin in the world! Emperor penguins can be up to 48 inches tall, so of course we had to see if we were taller than one. Here are some adorable pictures of the kindergarteners comparing their height to Penguin Pete, who joined our class this month!

Here's a group measuring Penguin Pete with unifix cubes during math centers.

We also learned about how penguins move (by hopping or tobogganing on their bellies), what they eat (fish, krill, and squid), and the life cycle of a penguin. Turns out male Emperor penguins are the ones to take care of the baby chicks! We watched penguins on the livecam at Seaworld (find the link here) and tried to spot the different breeds we were studying. Last, we did the Penguin Dance as many times as possible!

When our third grade reading buddies came to our class, they helped us make a penguin craft that is now hanging in our room. They turned out great!

To conclude, we did a Shared Writing paragraph on what we learned about penguins. Shared Writing is a great way for students to practice forming sentences, spelling difficult words, and sharing what they know about a topic in a piece of writing. This will help us a lot with our nonfiction writing unit in Writers Workshop, where we write All-About books!