This is our first year learning about Independence day… so we are going rather topical and trying to see a broad picture and get a handle on a holiday that is 100% new to us! We had 3 different files we used… Currclick has a great speedy lapbook from homeschool bits HERE. It is just 1.00. We also used Gift of Curiosity’s site HERE. The Simple Homeschool also has a file we found a while ago. You can access their site HERE. Lulu Marketplace also has a freebie HERE.

Helpful printables:

• Activity Village has a selection of printables etc on their site HERE.
• Lots of great stuff on Lapbook Lessons HERE.
• Mini book with DLTK HERE.
• I have a collection on Education.com for Independence Day HERE. I will rate all the ones I use before  the end of our unit.
• A free file from 2 Teaching Mommies HERE.
• LapbookLessons is also very helpful HERE.
• Maps on Free US and World Maps.com HERE.
• Cute journalling pages thanks to Education to the Core HERE.

Crafts:

• The Little Sewing Shop has a way to make your own firework like thing HERE.
• We made flag fans by decorating paper and then doing an accordion fold before stapling the base.
• I cannot find the instructions anymore, but we made fireworks on paper using paint, a plastic lid and a hammer… you put globs of paint on the paper (we used poster board), place a plastic lid on top of it and smack it with a hammer… SPLAT firework!
• We made patriotic shakers (well they would have been if the kids had stuck with red white and blue)… two plastic cups, with beads inside, use a coloured masking tape to tape them together and decorate with stickers. Thanks to Lakeshore Learning store for that free craft! (HERE is the store site)

Books:

• Independence Day by Helen Frost HERE
• Independence Day by Marc Tyler Nobleman HERE
• Red, White, and Boom! by Lee Wardlaw HERE
• Celebrate Independence Day by Deborah Heiligman HERE
• Independence Day by Elaine Landau HERE
• Independence Day by Ann Heinrichs HERE
• Calendar Mysteries: July Critters by Ron Roy HERE
• Independence Day Crafts by Mary Berendes and Jean Eick HERE

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..