Penguin Art

We had a great time making these adorable penguin pictures this week. I found the idea on pinterest, but there wasn't a tutorial, so I thought I would give it a try and put my own spin on the project.   It takes quite a number of steps to make these, but they aren't difficult.  We managed to do them in one day.  We did the painting part in the morning as a center, and did the rest in the hour after lunch time.

Please excuse the photography in this post.  These were taken with my phone with no natural light!

Step 1: Assemble your materials.  You will need:

-background paper 8.5 by 11 or so (I used white card stock)

-white paper for bellies (half of a 8.5 paper for each person)

-black paper for bodies and wings

-strip of orange paper for beak and feet

-black sharpie (one that won't run if it gets wet)

-at least three shades of blue/purple paint

-paintbrush(es)

-scissors

-glue stick

-snowflake punches (optional)

Step 2: Draw gentle curved lines for a nearby hill and a faraway hill.  Your paper will then be divided into three sections.  One of the sections will be sky and two will be hills.  If your students need to, they can first draw with pencil and go over it with marker.  My first graders just went straight to the sharpie.  

Step 2: Paint each section a different shade of a cool color like blue or purple.  Encourage students to use a swirly brush motion for the sky section to add interest. Allow to dry.

Step 3: Using black construction paper, make the shapes for one large penguin and one small penguin.  We did them in elongated semi-circle shapes.  Semi-ovals?  :)  If you fold your 9 by 12 construction paper as I did below, you can get 2 large penguins and 4 small penguins out of one sheet.  If you need to save time, you can pre-cut the black penguin shapes for your students, or you can just give them the rectangles and instruct them to make their shapes as big as possible to fit their rectangle.  

Step 4: Cut the black penguin body shapes, and create wing shapes out of the leftover black paper.  

If you are pre-cutting the body shapes for your students, they won't have leftover paper to work with, so they will need a black rectangle to create their wing shapes.  

Step 5: Choose if you like the look of a crayon belly or a paper belly.  I prefer the paper.  Have the students create the shape by placing their black body over the white paper and tracing.  Then they just need to draw a smaller semi-circle shape inside and cut it out. 

 

Step 6: Glue the wings and belly pieces.

 

Step 7: Create beaks and feet out of orange paper, and draw eyes with the black sharpie. 

Step 8: Glue the penguins on, ensuring that the smaller penguin is behind, on the far away hill.  I told my students a little penguin story to talk about linear perspective to make sure they understood that we were trying to show that items of the same size appear to be different sizes when one is far away and one is close.  

If you have a snowflake punch, punch 6-8 snowflakes and then glue them all around.  It looks nice if at least one snowflake overlaps a penguin, but I didn't require it.  I try to not to be overly restrictive with things like this, since it's my students' art after all!  

Here are some lovely student samples: 

And here are some of them up on the bulletin board:

Have fun!  Let me know if you try this out and how it goes!

If you are studying penguins or other polar animals right now, but you know you will be doing more animal research with your students this year, try snapping up my Animal Research note-taking forms and report pages.  You can use them for any animal and get your students used to the format.  

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Animal-Research-1231323

Click on the picture to check it out. 

Five for Friday- Penguins, Sharing Circle, and Cooperation

I couldn't bear to sit down at the computer yesterday (on Friday!) so it's a Five for Saturday post, really!  I love this linky party though, so I wanted to make sure to do it today.  Be sure to check out the other posts by going to Doodle Bugs Teaching.  

Our special interactive book of the week was Cuddly Dudley by Jez Alborough.  I love this book.  It's about a penguin (Dudley) who all of the other penguins consider to be very cuddly.  They always want to huddle up and cuddle him, but the problem is, Dudley doesn't enjoy cuddles!  So, he heads off to find some peace and quiet.  It doesn't turn out the way he had anticipated.  This story leads into a nice conversation about people needing personal space and alone time.  It's also just a lot of fun to read, and on the second and third day, the students are able to join in quite a bit.  

On the second day of the book I created this vocabulary chart with the students.  We talked about what the words mean, and then we played an interactive movement game.  The students spread out around the class and had to listen to my whispered directions of "waddle" (be a penguin waddling), enormous (taking enormous human steps), or "huddle" and they needed to huddle up together like penguins.  

On the third day we did a collaborative re-tell using the pictures only.  I called on different students to re-tell what happened on each page.  Ideally I would have asked the students to each do a re-tell of the whole book without the pictures (we're really working on the skill of re-telling), but something came up and I didn't have the chance to do that.  The students did do some story response writing in their journals.  I made sure to have some cute penguin stickers to put in their books.  :)

We made these adorable penguin pictures this week.  I was inspired by an idea I found online, but I wanted to tweak it to my students' level.  In short, we drew the lines of the close hill and the far hill in pencil, then we went over in with a black sharpie.  Next students painted each section in a different shade of blue/purple.  I encouraged students to use smooth brush strokes for the hills and swirly brush strokes for the sky. Some students really go into it!  While the background was drying, we made the penguins out of construction paper.  I have some snowflake punches so the students took turns punching those out (that was a big hit---in fact, one of my lovelies enjoyed the punches so much he put them away----in his own backpack!).  After the background was all dry we glued the pieces in place, and voila!  Beautiful ridiculously cute penguins!  I plan to make a post all about that art project soon.

Of course since we are studying penguins we read more penguin fact books and we even watched an Emperor Penguin Critter-Cam episode on Tumblebooks.  It was really interesting! 

We have started having a sharing circle every morning.  I wish I would have started doing this right from the beginning of the year, but I just didn't get into the habit. I was feeling rushed about curriculum because we had a delayed school year because of job action and I forgot! Anyhow, we pass the "conch" around the room and each person shares in this format:  I am feeling ______ because_______.  I like it much better than simply sharing without the feeling aspect, because it encourages the students to express their feelings and to qualify them in some way so that I can use that information to help me relate to them that day.  We don't do journal writing every day, but if we do, we do it right after the sharing circle so that they can use that as their topic.  

 We did some cooperative games this week, including this activity.  Students each had their own mini white board, and then they were given instruction to put their boards together in their choice of configuration (for example, in the above configuration or in a long row).  I gave them the topic of "under the sea" and they needed to talk together about their plan and then work together to make a picture.  This is a nice activity because you can quickly see which students need more help TALKING about their plan, and then you can guide them with conversation and problem-solving skills to work as a team.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend!  I'm at home with a few sick kids and my wonderful husband who is currently making muffins and meat loaf.  It's a good life!

My Bookshelf- January Week 2

I try to do a lot of read-alouds in my class.  Sometimes they are studied and re-read for comprehension or writing lessons, and sometimes they are simply read for pleasure.

These are some of the books that I read this week.

Polar Slumber- Dennis Rockhill.  If you haven't read this book yet, you MUST!  It is absolutely stunning.  I gather from some reviews that this book began as a wordless picture book, however the version I borrowed from the library does have words.  The story is very imaginative and dreamy.  A child's polar dream comes to life.

Omar on Ice- Maryann Kovalski- I love this book.  It is about a bear (Omar) who gets frustrated while drawing in class.  The other students seem to have no trouble at all.  One friend suggests to Omar that maybe the problem is his pencil's fault.  Later Omar is skating and he is a fantastic skater.  The students realize that his skating has created beautiful designs in the ice and they realize that Omar CAN draw, just with a different kind of "pencil"- his skates!

Snowmen at Night and Snowmen All Year- Caralyn Buehner and Mark Buehner.  These books are so imaginative and fun.  They can lead to fantastic conversations and are perfect for springboards into writing lessons.  

There was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow- Lucille Colandro and Jared D Lee.  The students love these books because of the rhyme and repetition.  I always invite the students to join in and chorally read the parts they know.  Of course, the students feel so smart when they predict what the lady is going to "create" with all of the items she swallows.  

The Mitten and The Hat- Jan Brett-  Of course, these books are staples during the winter season.  I love talking with the students about Jan Brett's picture clues in the borders and edges of the pages, and the stories are so fun as well. 

All You Need For A Snowman-  This book is a good lead-in to procedural writing or list making.  

Dream Snow- Eric Carle (Ok, I have to confess, I did not read this book to my students, I read it to my son at home.   But I felt the need to include it in my collage this week because I have read this book at least 10 times this week.  It is beautiful, and my 3.5 year old can practically recite the book on his own. )

I think of all seasonal books, winter books are my favorite of all.  There are so many magical and beautiful books.  And, I always feel like I need more :)

Five for Friday- Winter, Messy Charts, and RTI

It's time for another Five for Friday post.  I am linking up via Doodle Bugs Teaching.  Be sure to check out the other teacher posts as well!

This week was a bit more challenging than some weeks.  I have realized that it's time to spend a bit of time going back to the basics and working on some team-building and self-regulation strategies.  My dear teacher-blogger friend Shelley over at The Write Stuff had some great words for me and also sent me her fabulous Self Regulation Station.  I am so excited to put this together.  I plan on using it to guide part of our morning meeting check in, as well as for check-ins for students who need it throughout the day.  One of the fun activities we did this week was paint these windy day snowmen.  I love how they turned out!  

We have been reading a lot of lovely winter books lately.  One of the books that I read every year is "The Mitten Tree."  It's a very sweet book about an old woman who notices that some children of the children who are going to school don't have mittens.  She knits mittens for them and hangs them on a tree, but doesn't tell the children that she is the one who is putting them there.  She gets great joy from seeing the children wear them.  At the end of the story we learn that someone else is helping to spread joy by making sure that her knitting basket is always filled up with balls of wool so that she can continue to make mittens for the children.  

After I read the story to the children we chatted a bit about the kindness and generosity aspects of the story.  Then we moved onto a descriptive writing and drawing lesson.  I had some of the students come up and design a mitten, other students to color in the mittens, and then other students to use descriptive words to describe the mittens.  We practiced reading the sentences and then the students went to their own writing books and designed their own mittens and described them.  The students really enjoyed it, and it was a good way for me to quickly see who understood the concept of descriptive sentences.  I will definitely do this type of lesson again with another theme.  

Here is a picture of the chart we made.  I especially wanted to include it in this post because of how "real" it is.  My charts are not all pinterest-worthy, that's for sure!  Here we have messy printing, a dying marker, and missing words!  It's real life :)

We've been working on subtraction in math.  I have been enjoying using the student mini-white boards and the smart board for practice.  We also do practice using my Dino Addition and Subtraction pack.  I haven't been doing them as drills, just as practice pages.  We have also been doing some dice games in a center format.  Some of my students are ready for Subtraction within 10, so we will start that with those students this upcoming week. 

Today I had the privilege of hearing Tom Hierck present on RTI.  It was a motivational and informational day.  

It's time for the weekend.  It's going to be filled with chores, family time, and hopefully some relaxation as well.  I hope you all had a great week, and thanks for stopping by!  

Five for Friday Linky Party- January 9

I have decided to start joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's weekly linky party!  I love seeing what other teachers are up to in their classrooms and lives.

I live where we can't count on snow in winter.  I'm always excited when we do get some of the white stuff!  I love how the students get so excited, and now that I have two kids of my own, I of course love how much joy they can get out of it.  We got snow for one day this week, and then it warmed up a LOT and melted away within a few days.  There was a short window of time that worked for a quick toboggan ride around the neighborhood.  

This was the first week back after our Christmas break.  I had a fantastic week with my kiddos.  First grade is such an exciting year.  The growth the students make developmentally, academically, and socially is amazing.  

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Greater-Than-Less-Than-1626974

This week we worked on greater than and less than in math.  The students enjoyed the pocket chart activity I created.  We also watched a few short youtube videos about greater than and less than.  We completed a few cut and paste pages from my greater than and less than packet as well.  

Our "Special" book of the week was "The Hat" by Jan Brett.  We did a 3 day reading sequence and did a few oral activities with it.  We did a vocabulary study on three of the words.  I kept this chart posted up throughout the week, and it is moved to another highly visible spot for all of next week as well.  

We also read the books "One Winter's Day" and "One Snowy Night" by M Christina Butler.  They are wonderful books to read in conjunction with The Hat.   All three of the books include a hedgehog, so we did a quick discussion about hedgehogs (which invariably turns into a discussion between the difference between hedgehogs and porcupines! It was nice to diverge from the traditional comparisons between "The Hat" and "The Mitten."  The pictures of the animals in The Hat are available on Jan Brett's website.

 Here is a video of "One Winter's Day." Here is a list on Amazon of books by M Christina Butler. 

I started Guided Reading this week.  It was a really successful kick-off.  The students were excited to try something new, and one student even said, I actually LIKE this!  (He seemed a bit shocked with himself.)  

I do Daily Five in my classroom, but we have been doing it in a modified way so far this year.  I assign the students to their activity and they are rotated through.  Our goal is that we will be able to switch to student choice in February.  I think we will be able to do it!  

I have been using this smartboard choice chart by Smart Kinder Kids and it is fabulous. The students love how easy it is to read, and I love how easy it is to switch student names around.  Goodbye pocket chart sign up!!

I'll leave you with this picture of my daughter watching the snow fall after our outing (and hot chocolate of course!)

Happy (Almost) New Year!

The school year has just been zooming by!  I can hardly believe that 2015 is almost here.  To ring in the new year, I have joined some wonderful teacher-blogger friends to offer at TpT gift certificate giveaway!  You can enter here, and make sure to check out some fantastic deals as well! a Rafflecopter giveaway