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! 

Organization - Daily Schedules for the Kids

Sorry that I haven't posted for so many days. My husband's grandfather died and I took a few days off to spend time with my husband and his family. I am going to post the blog I had been working on for Sunday because it is already half finished, and kind of see where I am at after that because I also have some homework to catch up on for school. (I am in school too, not just the kids!) So, here we go:

This week I decided to make schedules for my kids and post them up on the walls so that they would know what to expect from their days. The seed for the idea started when I saw my friend's blog about making similiar charts for her own children here Children Need Rules and Structure and Charts . That seed continued to grow and flourish throughout the week.

My husband and I told our littlest one that there are no electronics after dinner time but he just couldn't understand. Finally, I knew just what would do the trick! A little label on his chart with a picture that said "electronics off" every night! Now all I needed was a chart. 

I couldn't make a chart exactly like the one at Juana Be's because I need something a little less static. My husband and I are both in college and then we have church activities, a co-op, errands, blah blah blah. I wanted my kids to be able to wake up every day and know exactly what to expect from their day so I decided to make a chart that had velcro on it and the activities could be added and removed every night when I fill my workboxes. That way the schedule can vary from day to day! I work hard to keep it as consistent as possible, but this way there is room for the changes in our schedules and it is all visual for the kids.

The schedules went up officialy on Thursday morning, and so far I would say they are working great! Today (this would be Sunday when I was typing this) I told the kids we would be going to their grandmother's at 3:00 and Alex yelled: "3:00! But that is snack time!" It was so funny to see how he is already getting so settled into his little routine and doesn't like to see anything messing it up. He also does much better at doing his chores now that there is a scheduled time to do them every night and there is already no tv allowed at that time anyways so he "might as well" spend some time with me working on his chores.