Penguin Fun {Lots of Writing and a Freebie!}

Hello friends! We just finished up our week working on penguins and polar animals. My kinders loved it and we had so much fun! I love incorporating Science and Social Studies into my ELA. It doesn't happen every week, but it does happen often.
Each morning our message was about penguins. After a discussion, and sometimes brainstorming, students wrote about the topic in their journals.

On this day, our message was to inform my students that penguins hatch from eggs. We brainstormed what other animals hatched from eggs. They did awesome thinking of animals that hatched from eggs! 

We read several books about penguins and polar animals and discussed that we were learning facts. We talked about the difference between fact and opinion. To help with that concept we did a fact/opinion sort on penguins.

 All you have to do is print, cut out and sort on a pocket chart! And the best part...you can get them free from my store! {I'd love to have your feedback!}

On our last day we read a National Geographic about puffins.

We made a bubble map. After the lesson, I took the bubble map down. I decided to put it in my treasure box instead of trashing it like normal. The kids were excited and it was the first item taken from the treasure box that day. Score for me because it was free! 

 After our brainstorming, students go to work with their writing. I used a brace map with the words "The puffin" already there for them with each sentence. I wanted them to write 3 sentences about what they have learned. Our focus was more on retelling and writing what you have learned than correct sentence structure. So having the starter there already helped them with their writing. 

The writing came from my Polar Animals {No Prep Writing}

We just happened to earn a compliment party on Thursday. I let my kinders vote between doing a special surprise craft or a special surprise snack. Of course they chose snack! 

We made penguins out of bow-tie pretzels, big marshmallows and chocolate frosting. Very easy and yummy! 

 The finished product was cute. It doesn't exactly look like a penguin and we had chocolate frosting everywhere. But it was fun and that's what counts!

I'm so thankful we can now use YouTube at school on teacher computers. Just watch out for some crazy/inappropriate advertisement sometimes.

Here are some of the penguin videos we watched this week. 

This one is a documentary. My kinders loved seeing the penguins slide.

We LOVED this one!!

Now, I'm prepping for next week. We will be working on "The Mitten", celebrating 100th day and complete our unit on comparing numbers!

I'm linked up with A Classroom Full of Smiles for her lesson plan linky.

And I'm linked up with Classroom Freebies.

100th Day Madness and a Penguin Freebie

Whew, well today was 100th day and boy did we celebrate (as well as have a fire drill during our 15 minute rest time with the lights out...all things considered they handled that one well). We had so much fun and spent the entire day working with 100.

Of course there was an opportunity to dress up. :) Students had the option of dressing like they were 100 years old. Take a look at these cuties! They were so adorable!

I opted out of old lady attire and chose to make my pinterest inspired 100th day shirt.

Much to my surprise, the  hot glue prevailed and none of the wiggle eyes came off.
First we made our 100th day crowns, because in kindergarten hats are super cool. You can get it for free from Julie Lee's TPT Store, just click on the picture. {Sorry the picture is sideways, it's just one of those things}.

 

 We wrote 100 words.

Painted 100 dots with Q-tips.

Brought 100 things to count. I love these counting mats! The pin orginally came from a post from Erica Boher.

I got a lot of ideas from pinterest {how did I ever manage without it?!}. Click here to get to my 100th day board.

And of course had awesome snacks at the end of it all. And you can't finish out 100th day without reading "Miss Bindergarten"!

 

Next week we are moving on to penguins! I'm pretty excited and I have a little freebie for you!

 

 

If you are doing a nonfiction unit on penguins, you may be able to use this fact or opinion sort! Just click on the picture to download it from my little store! I would love to hear your feedback on it.