Penguins, Penguins, Penguins!

Your eyes are not betraying you, we are still working on penguins! Alex can't get enough of them and because of my surgery we are having lighter school days anyways. I still have at least 2 weeks left of being unable to really even leave the couch, and I don't want to get into anything new that I would have to go shopping for or anything in the mean time. The stairs here are so steep I have to crawl up and down them to leave our house, and that is not fun!

Here is my favorite project this week: it came from the Penguins and Mittens book, of course, and it is just adorable. You take googly eyes, card stock, a film canister, and glue and make  a penguin. How handsome is this guy!?!

Here we (attempted) to make igloos out of marshmallows and toothpicks. It was not as easy as I thought it was. There are a lot of projects for penguins and Antarctica involving igloos, so I have now had to explain to my 3 year old that penguins don't REALLY live in igloos. Oops.

Alex really just wanted to eat the marshmallows. 

Here are some Penguin fractions that I got from Love2learn2day

Here is a penguin potato stamping project from Penguins and Mittens. I posted this picture so you could see how the potato pieces were cut in order to make the penguin parts. 

And here is the final product! 

Here is Alex with his Penguin toob. He enjoys playing with all of the penguins, for Bella she can try to identify the different species.

Here is our "Frozen Adventures" wall. Each day Bella writes a story about something that happens to her while she is visiting Antarctica and we post it on our wall!

We are loving our trip to Antarctica, and hope that you will enjoy it, also! 

Penguin Art, Volume 1

We have taken the Penguin plunge! (By the way, doesn't that sound like some fun zoo exhibit where you get to swim with the penguins? I wish it were real!) At any rate, we started our penguin studies this week and we are loving them! We just want to be a part of the cool crowd, I guess, because everyone is studying penguins and Antarctica right now.

See that baby? It is Alex on his first Halloween. He was so ahead of the penguin trend. 

Here are our current penguin-y resources:

Expedition Earth from Erica at

Which has about a million ideas for crafts, snacks, games, etc. because has several penguin unit studies in it (It covers such books as Tacky the Penguin and Mr. Popper's Penguins)

tack

Finally, I have also been dabbling over at the website of
Love2LEarn2Day where they are also doing a penguin study right now and there are tons of fun ideas and links!

We have been having so much fun! Anyone who knows my Alex knows he has a love for all things penguin, and that is what actually made me decide to take a brief interlude from my other studies to do some penguin studies with the kids. I just knew
he would truly enjoy it. Also, I am going to be getting surgery on my foot next Friday so I didn't want to start a new chapter in our science or Little House in the Big woods. I will be posting this week to finish up the chapters we were working on, but then I will take a week off and post about other things as I will be laid up for about 7-10 days.

And now, onto our penguin art for this week!

First, we have this lovely penguin made from a balloon, cardstock, and scotch tape. Isn't he handsome? We call him Mr. Waddles. But he mostly just falls over, so don't get your hopes up in that department.

Up next we have some lovely penguins made out of toilet paper tubes. Everyone loves to have something to do with those empty tubes once they have removed all of the precious TP, right? Well today, you are in luck! You can turn them into a cute little penguin! Male and female versions are available, just change out your bow!
You can find the template here, at DLTK's Penguin Crafts for Kids

And for our final craft of the week, a delicious one. 

Enjoy! We did! 

Geography, Week 2 - Paper Globes and Penguins

This week for geography we started by finishing up our work on the globe. We had already made the paper mache earth, but I was also doing these lessons with a class at co-op and I needed something a little less messy. I originally thought I would just do the clay earths, but the room we were assigned this year is carpeted and the class is full of 5 year-olds and even play dough is too messy when you combine those type of elements, so I was delighted with this solution:

The paper strip globe is easy to make and not the least bit messy, also it has a bible verse on it. 

It can be found at this website: Craft Earth Day Globe

Since it is Winter time and my littlest student has developed a recent fascination with penguins, we have decided to make our first stop on the map Antarctica.

We decorated our passports and added our first stamp.

We read the book Explore Antarctica which led to some interesting discussions because my 8 year old because it talked of global warming in such a manner that my 8 year old was afraid of where we would live once the entire world was under water. As I type this I have a flash back to the movie "Water World" hehehe.  

This week we will have tons more activities about Antarctica in general and penguins specifically to explore and learn about. I can't wait! I hope that you all will join us!

Snow Days, Snow Play, Snow Learning My Way.

In lieu of "What's in the Box Wednesday" I am going to post about snow unit studies and outdoor play today. We have had quite a bit of snowfall here, and a lot of fun playing in it and learning about it!

On product we used to learn about snow (and do fun snow activities) is this FREE snow mini-helper from currclick: Snow Mini Helper

We have also been reading lots of books about snow, and winter for my preschooler:



For The Snowy Day we have a FREE lap book from www.homeschoolshare.com:
The Snowy Day Lapbook

We also used the "S is for snowman" printables from
to keep with our "snow" theme.

You can find the link to those activities here: S is for Snowman

We also made an animal board for Antartica because we are using the Expedition Earth curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler, and we are getting ready to start Anatartica to stay with our winter theme. My 3 year old has a fascination with penguins right now so I got some penguin books from the library (both fiction and non fiction) and I also got a book for about $4 at Mardels called Penguins and Mittens that I will be starting with both kids (but mostly Alex) next week. To top it all off I found a penguin clip/magnet that I can use to hold together and display the papers Alex does and it made him so excited! He can't wait!

Isabella's art project this week was also winter related, but I cannot tell you about that until Saturday, or else I will have nothing to talk about then! Lets just say it is cute, and I got it at Barnes and Noble for 50% off! Go me!

For outdoor play, we bought an inflatable toboggan, only to discover that Alex had chewed on and ruined the tube to my air pump. (Never a dull moment around here!) So hopefully we get this thing aired up soon so we can go sledding. It will be Alex's first time. I can't wait!


Since the pump was ruined, the kids settled for making snow angels and general snow frolicking.

I filled spray bottles with food coloring and vinegar so the could spray and write in color in the snow.

Bella's snow writing says "Season's Greetings" in green. Alex tried to write his name. 

Once I got cold, I bribed everyone in with hot chocolate and marshmallows, and we put a log in the fire.

I love snow days!