Sunday, January 19, 2014

Penguins, Penguins, and More Penguins!

We just finished our second week of learning all about penguins. We are focusing on penguins to meet a lot of our reading standards; however, we are learning about animals in general during science (how animals move, real/pretend, living/nonliving). 
This week I took tons of center pictures! Whenever I have the camera out my students automatically try their best because they want their picture taken! haha They don't even have any idea where the pictures go! 
One of our centers was a 'label it' center. I was watching to see which students remembered that chicks had 'down'. 
We need lots and lots of practice with addition and subtraction! This week we did some 'Sneaky Seal Addition'. 
I left unifix cubes at the center for students to use and they definitely helped!!
As always, we are working on sight words. Students had to 'feed the fish' by spelling the sight words on the penguins. 
We also need a lot of work still with rhyming (independently). Some of my kids are having a hard time with this. Rhyming will definitely be a center we continue!
This week we also worked on ABC order. 
My focus for this center was actually handwriting. I am really trying to get them to write their letters all the way from the top to the bottom. These two were very proud of their work!
My students worked together to complete their CVC words, listening for the medial vowel sound. They did an awesome job! We went over the words beforehand so they would know what all of the pictures were.
During writing I gave each student their own 'All About Penguins' book. They feel so special having their own book and they can't wait to take it home to share with their parents!
Their books have five pages inside and a table of contents. They are allowed to work on any page they want as long as they take their time!
This little one wrote what penguins eat. He used our KWL to help him spell his words.
Another student chose to write all about penguin chicks! I loved his bottom illustration which is hard to see in the picture. He drew a mom penguin swimming to get her baby chick food. So cute! :)
All of these activities can be found in either my Penguin Unit on TPT or in my January Word Work pack.

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