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..

April 29-30

Sometimes we just get a slow start… Monday and Tuesday really was that for us. However, we ARE all done our Earth Week learning with the ending being focused on becoming a member of the “Green Team” just like Freddy in Save the Earth by Abby Klein.

Green Team

Getting in some workbook time

While waiting on Gavin to wake up the other 3 did their nature journal pages out in the sunshine.

Getting some sun

We were unable to take our much wished for walk on Monday due to a deep sleeper (Gavin didn’t get up until past 10 am and although not sick like he was expected to be, he was exceptionally well rested). and two coughers. BUT we did have two bikes repaired and ready to go for Trinity and Emanuel! Two out of four is not bad, though the twins were less than impressed.

First real bike

Emanuel on the go

Fixing with Baba

The twins found OTHER things to do in the yard… skipping rope, soccer (where IS our large ball??), tree climbing, baby in her coup pushing… sunshine sunshine sunshine!

The beloved Coup

Kick Zander Kick

Up in the tree with Gavin

Chalk!

Tuesday had the weather AND the kids cooperating and we were able to eat breakfast and get our way out on a nice long walk. First the walking path, over the bridge and then … PARK!

Working on the nature journals

Echo wore the wrong shoes for the park with her fake crocs falling off and getting pebbles in them but she and Emanuel had a blast playing pirates with their own theme song and everything. We also picked up our garbage for our last requirement on that Green Team I mentioned earlier. 

Park!!!

Yo ho ho

Babies at the park

There is a 2 yr old behind that sun shade… seriously!

We had a new penguin themed book to enjoy – Turtle’s Penguin Day by Valerie Gorbachev. The kids then drew themselves in penguin costumes! Even Echo had her brothers help her. Now that Trinity is 5 we are working on having her more and more involved in schooling. She is all for the workbooks now and hopefully will be more and more willing to sit with us as we do our books and extended projects. I HAVE found her a special Mother’s Day (sort of) themed lapbook that she will do one on one with Mommy.

I love it when all 5 kids do a project all together

I was able to find a polar themed movie from the library that we picked up on the weekend. Really Wild Animals: Polar Prowl by National Geographic was a hit with our family. We watched it on Monday while Gavin was sleeping and then an encore on Tuesday so Gavin could see it and put in his input on our pamphlet style sheet. It is fun to look at the differences between the Arctic and Antartica wildlife.

Followed by some rather interesting Electric Company

We also lucked out with enough adults that Emanuel and Trinity got a Mommy and Daddy bike ride…

By the second ride a pro!

Lovely evening for it

While Echo ran out the door with Baba well in hand. 

Walking with Baba

With my little helper when it comes to laundry…

FOLD

We have continued our penguin and earth awareness trend… and with a good night’s sleep on Monday night (Sunday was a sleepless for yours truly) we will ramp up the week and run into Mother’s Day, spring and walk walk walk outside. 

Me and my twins