Penguins!

In January the first grade kids at our school spend the month learning about penguins. At the end of the month they have a penguin party and show off their penguin dioramas & their penguin knowledge. It is a really fun unit & the kids love it. At the beginning of the month, the kids get assigned a type of penguin to research and base their dioramas on. Parker got the Rockhopper Penguin. I thought I was being the organized mom that I like to be, and at Christmas time I bought a bunch of snow stuff knowing that this project was coming up. When Preston had this assignment in first grade, I had never heard of it. Looking in stores in mid-January for penguins and snow was next to impossible. So I was being cocky and bought lots of snow and snow flakes in December. Well guess what? Rockhopper Penguins don't go in snow! Figures?!?! So bottles of snow, cotton, snow flakes, etc., right in the trash.  :)

Parker's first round of spray painting the Styrofoam was not successful. He held the can too close and it totally blew the foam away. The paint eats at it until nothing is left if you don't put it on a little at a time. So we had to start over.

The project is supposed to be done by the kids with parental supervision. I hot glue gunned the penguins together and made the background for the box, but Parker did everything else. At his insistence he learned to use the glue gun. Of course, he burned himself!

The finished project!

I looked around everywhere for plastic penguins to use, and I could not find them anywhere. I was at Michael's, looking for penguins of course, and they had some Easter Ducks on display made out of clay pots and foam balls cut in half. Luckily my thinking cap was on & I thought they would make cute penguins. Cute and cheap!

At the party they made penguin snacks out of Oreos. The kids were eating them faster than they could make them.

At the party the kids sat at their tables with the dioramas & the parents, teachers & other students walked around to look at them. The kids were so excited to share their knowledge.

A good sized group of the high school students came over to the displays. They had a list of questions to ask the kids about their projects and "test" them on their knowledge.  Our school is all on one campus so there is a lot of interaction from pre-school through high school.  The older students are so good with the younger ones. The younger kids are in awe of the "cool" high school students and the fact they came to see their work just made their day. You can just see Parker's head sticking up over his diorama. I have no idea where we got such a short kid from!