So from platypuses to penguins… we are truly into the “P” critters!! So of course it is time for a resource blog!

Free lapbooks!

• Penguin Lapbook at LapbookLessons.
• Mr. Popper’s Penguins Unit and Lapbook Printables at Homeschoolshare.com

Worksheets

• Penguin Notebooking Pages at The Notebooking Fairy
• Colouring pages for Mr. Popper’s Penguins the movie at Education.com
• Grid Copy Penguin at Activity Village
• Penguin Color by Sight Words at Education.com
• Getting to the Zoo: What Time Is It? at Education.com
• Itsy Bitsy Penguin Book at KidZone
• Labelling an African Penguin at KidZone
• What I Learned About Penguins at KidZone Crafts
• Word Search (hard) at DLTK
• Emperor Penguin Colouring Page at Animals Town
• Snowflake printables at Snowflakes for Christmas
• A Penguin Grows Up at Teaching Heart
• Penguin Coloring Page at Heather Sybil Chavez
• Map of the US at FreeUsandWorldMaps.com
• Antartica Colouring Pages at Education.com

Helpful Websites

• Penguin Beach at the London Zoo
• Penguin Songs and Poems at KidZone
• SeaWorld Teacher’s guide at Seaworld.org
• Field Trip Site at Hud – this was suggested by the Mr. Popper’s lapbook site. Quite a good resource for some fun virtual government related tours.
• Our Poem/Song about penguins at DLTK

Books

• What’s in the Egg, Little Pip? by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
• Penguin Says Please by Michael Dahl
• Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
• The Pebble First Guide to Penguins by Katy R. Kudela
• National Geographic Science Readers: Penguins by Anne Schreiber
• Little Penguin The Emperor of Antartica by Jonathon London
• A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis
• Face to Face With Penguins by Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott
• If You Were a Penguin by Wendell and Florence Minor
• Life Cycle of a Penguin by Lisa Trumbauer
• I am a Penguin by Karen Durrie
• My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
• Turtle’s Penguin Day by Valerie Gorbachev
• Penguins by Lynn M. Stone
• Poles Apart by Elaine Scott
• Ready Freddy #19, The Penguin Problem by Abby Klein

Crafts

• Paper Loop Penguins at Crafty-Crafted.com
• Enjoy a colour wheel with Art Projects for Kids. This is not so much a craft but a simple printable set up with all the colours, complementary, cold and warm… great illustration of it.
• Penguin finger puppets at Fantastic Find

Of course there is always a video to supplement. If you want the cliff notes version of Captain Cook (the explorer our first penguin is named after)? Check out Crash Course World History on youTube.

We did have a video to watch:

• Really Wild Animals: Polar Prowl by National Geographic

No video to embed, but if you go to Amazon… Dirty Jobs included looking after Penguins at a zoo in an episode HERE. As there is a misunderstanding as to WHAT Captain Cook is early in the book, there is a small section on the dodo… I decided to do a little searching for some resources…

• A Dodo colouring page at Education.com
• Fun Fact page at The Jungle Store
• Extinct Birds: Dodo at Animal Planet

We had two videos we watched, TED only is relevant to the process of a Mythbusters host creating his own skeleton but some amazing shots of it and his reference.

And a museum short from Manchester

Some of the penguins were named after obvious famous people. We watched videos about some of the more interesting (to our boys) characters… First Columbus.

Ferdinand Magellan

And two about Robert Falcon Scott

Chapter 13 deals with music AND training animals. So there is the music link for The Merry Widow Waltz HERE. And then Schubert’s Military March on youTube.

For trained animals we chose to take a peek at the trained cormorants in China. There is a list on the lapbook file of other options but this one seemed to scream our kids’ interest.

Mr. Popper starts his travels with the penguins in Seattle. So of course we had to check out a tourist video..

May 17-18

I am so proud of the boys… our Mother’s Day lapbook is officially complete! They worked so hard on it!!

Front

Back

Proud boys!

Add in the final chapter of our Mr. Popper’s Penguins (right on schedule) and we are really making our self (and library) imposed deadlines. Though on Monday we have to cover Antarctica in a little more detail.

Ga The End

We had some of our magazines show up from the subscriptions Gammie got the kids! Instant stop and look!

Magazines

We got in a game of Dora themed Candyland…

Candyland!

The art just kept coming!

Gavin and Emanuel at work

Zander’s birthday card for his god daddy

By Trinity

Because a grid looks “cool” (Zander)

Nana and Baba went out to the new Star Trek movie and brought the kids home some cards that were handed out when they pre purchased their tickets. Echo was CERTAIN at at least one of the pictures was of her Daddy!

Cards spread out for viewing

We have made certain that everything possibly completed has been on a rather rainy Friday. Poor Echo seems to have the same allergy to bug bites as her sister and had a couple swollen bites on her left knee to contend with.

I have started a new large project – a blanket for the family to use on picnics. I am NOT going to link the pattern as I chose a variegated and Ken the grey and the result is NOTHING like the original cut and dry geometric pattern… and I LOVE it!

I figured after all these completions they had earned some Minecraft time… so in the end a good week for all of us!

Signs of Spring

Saturday we took the bigger 4 garage sale hunting (leaving Echo at home with Baba) and spent some time in the backyard while Ken helped with setting up the next step of the straw bale garden.

Setting up the frames

Our garage sale trip resulted in a few cute pieces of clothing for the girls… some books…

We are starting the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle on Monday

And a game where you shoot little metal balls back and forth across some sort of a board. I think we did rather well! Definitely something we will repeat.

The mighty hunters of good deals

New game

And of course I took some photos of our resident adorable baby.

With ball in hand

I am very proud of her hat! I cannot get over how helpful and handy crocheting has become!

And that was just the beginning of our weekend!!!

Skirt flared out

May 15-16

Where has the first half of the week gone??? I realized early on this week that I could not renew our copy of Mr. Popper’s Penguins so the push has been on to read the last few chapters. The consensus is that the book is VERY different from the movie but both are good.

The weather seemed slightly questionable on Wednesday with lots of clouds and cool breezes so we kept our park outing relatively short. The other kids were there though and we had fun. BUT we left late to get there.

The other kids shared their toys

So much fun

Our book of the day was My Mother’s Voice by Joanne Ryder. I had them draw things that reminded them of me… interesting collection!

My Mother’s Voice

The boys all took advantage of the Art for Kids newest how to — drawing an Eagle. I was surprised at how creative Zander got!!! A first for him! He tells me TWO page drawings are where it’s at now!

Eagles

Gavin took the art one step further and did TWO wonderful illustrations he wants to gift to his goddaddy Cory… we just need Ken to actually REMEMBER to drop them off!  Of course we jumped (hehe) at the chance to do a new Wild Kratts – two kinds of hares – arctic and hispid.

Wild Kratts

We took a vote on Thursday and decided to walk the main road to look for yard sale signs. We didn’t find any but the day was warm and the birds out in droves.

Drawing on the go

After we got back we took some necessary bubble time and enjoyed the little breezes pushing them around.

Bubbles

For our dinosaurs we had stepped back most of the week to make room for other activities BUT Emanuel and I enjoyed some dinosaur jokes. You can print them out HERE.

Their fancy envelope

Our pre lunch work was quite cooperative. I was so proud of the big boys helping the younger kids with their workbooks.

Working together

After regular work and naps for the little ones it was back outside time. Art has been choice of the day for activities and then some.

Art pads out!!

Even the bitty one

This was a piece for Nana

Sunny moments are starting to add up and I am glad.

Cheese