June 17-18

I love it when a unit is done on time. The kids even sang their song to Ken on Father’s Day. Though with our issues of posting our vids on youTube that may be a belated post.

Anyway, Father’s Day is COMPLETED! And what an almost origami project of a lapbook. You can find our resource blog HERE.

Topped off with diploma

We are loving our single lapbooks for the family, they end up HUGE and full of cooperation and family learning!! We had some lovely penguin images come in the mail from Gammie… so of course we had to stop everything and paste them into our Penguin Lapbook. Oh and then look through it again… lions are our next animal by the way.

Perfect Penguin Pictures

There was one more book to read that tied into Father’s Day…

Daddy drew the front picture on this one!

And a beauty parlour to run.

Emanuel has the most patience on this one

Gavin had a book completion! His first picture journal DONE! Emanuel had to show off his sidewalk art elephant… And get his hands dirty with another dino dig day…

With a different help the next day

Miss Echo had a baby who needed some fresh air. We even squeezed in a family walk. Now Tuesday was a bit of a throw up in the air day with Sean having come for a relatively unexpected visit. That meant in the morning Ken and I had to head off and pick him up, stop in and see Bree (fancy coffee!), and go out for a nice lunch. The kids were over the moon!!

Jet lag

It was time to enjoy the sunshine… as infrequent as it has been.

Echo’s day as a biker chick!

AND the kids made a rather mature decision. They gave up a year of birthday presents from Nana and Baba for a rather extensive wooden playset NOW. That meant that Ken and Sean had to drag out the trailer and get the wood off and into the garage for sorting. So a completion AND a visitor. Quite the beginning of a week!

Pin wheels are a work in progress for Echo!

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 31- June 1

I am a wee bit biased… June is my favourite month. Let’s see… my birthday, our anniversary, Father’s Day isn’t half bad… the boys were baptized in June… and the first day of summer… It is my first in the states and has given me a bundle of confusing emotions… homesick a wee bit I might add as there is another special moment to remember starting this June – my dear cousin Veronika is getting married!!!! I am dreadfully sad to have to miss it, but darn it… immigration moves slowly for those who are not willing to pay money into a lawyer.

Anyway first we need to END the month… so… Friday… Day one of the intrepid paleontologist Emanuel’s first dig. He has a box set up that we can store in the garage and it is all his show. He found the tip of a bone on the very first day! Everyone is rather jealous, but in the end this is something Emanuel is truly in love with, like Gavin and his art.

The clay block he begins with

Perfect chance for art in the sun… nature art!!

Working on the front steps

We have changed it up a bit with the reading now that our school program is over with Pizza Hut for the year… now the kids are reading for their younger siblings! Adorable and great practice telling stories to other people.

Did you know Batman is good at helping with workbooks???

Oh and after a long month+…. A COMPLETION!!! PENGUINS! I am beyond proud on this one… we learned so much and we did it together! We all learned something new and COOPERATED! Bask in the penguin glory! Oh, and enjoy the resources we share in the next blog.

We even topped the day with some rather impressive (and according to Ken who had to run out and cover the straw bale gardens painful!) hail.

What is a week without a weekend?? Let’s welcome in June with a Saturday… Time to spiffy up the twins with new buzzed haircuts thanks to Nana, Baba and Daddy! Not bad!!

All done

But even before that… HOME DEPOT! They made adorable wagon pencil holders… note that Trinity now has her apron too!

And then some shopping with the whole family… flip flops for the twins and a new swimsuit for Trinity… With the rest of the day freed up for play and relaxation… June has begun, lets hope the weather gets a little more consistent with some sunshine.

Fun in the sun!