During circle time, we read a story called The Emperor's Egg. While reading the story, we learned all kinds of neat facts about the Emperor penguin. Did you know that the dad penguins keep the egg warm on their feet for two whole months while the mom swims out to sea? We also learned that not all penguins hold eggs on their feet. Some penguins that live where it is warmer build nests or burrows for their eggs. Penguins don't only eat fish. They also eat squid and krill! Ask your child what he or she remembers about penguins!
We tried to be daddy penguins too! Miss McCabe gave us each an egg to try to hold on our feet. It was not as easy as it looks! Some of us even tried to walk with the egg on our feet and that was even trickier!
Then we let our eggs "hatch." Each penguin had a "name" (or letter) and we were all excited to see our penguin chick's name!
During centers, we pretended we were penguin moms and dads. Miss McCabe had a penguin chick and our job was to catch some fish to feed to it. We also had to help teach numbers to our penguin chick! Before feeding it, we had to show the fish we caught and tell the chick the number on the fish. Instead of swimming, we used fishing poles to catch our fish.
We have also been slowly adding in skills to help us get ready for expectations in Kindergarten next year. Today we had to independently sort penguins. Those with the letter P were glued onto a large P. The penguins with other letters were glued onto the back. This was tricky for some of us because we had to keep on task and finish in the time allotted, just like if we were in Kindergarten.
Those that worked diligently and finished their penguin P activity early got to visit independent centers. The pokey pin penguin activity was the most popular! Many found it relaxing (and it is a great fine motor activity to build up those muscles in our hands)!
We also had a fish snack today since penguins love fish! First we had to count the correct number of fish crackers onto each penguin. Then we got to eat!
Then it was playtime. The popular areas were playing with the penguins and water in the sensory table, fishing, and playing with the penguin eggs. Some children even went so far as to build nests out of blocks for their penguin eggs.
We learned that the Emperor penguin can be up to 4 feet tall. Miss McCabe hung up a penguin that was 4 feet tall. We measured to see if we were taller, shorter, or the same size as the Emperor penguin. Many of us could not believe that some Emperor penguins would be taller than us! We graphed how many of us were taller, shorter, or the same size on the SMART Board.
We also learned that a penguin is a bird because it has feathers. However, it is a bird that doesn't fly. We read a silly story about a penguin that really wanted to be able to fly. In the end, he discovered that although he couldn't fly in the sky, he could "fly" in the water!
We also learned some penguin songs. Click on the links below to listen to and watch some songs to reinforce some of the facts we learned about penguins today!
Have a wonderful evening! :)
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