Penguin Unit

I have been doing a penguin unit with my firsties for the past few years, but decide to step up my game this time around, with help from all the ideas I saw on Pinterest and TPT.  When the kids returned from Christmas vacation they found our door decorated like this.  I saw something similar on Pinterest, I only changed to say 2012 instead of winter.  The kids loved it!  Then I used Lindsey's Penguin Fareebie to introduce the unit.  The kids filled out their information about what they knew and wanted to know.  Through the month of January we read several penguin non-fiction books and watched The March of the Penguins.  I also read several stories with penguins as characters to the kids and to start our own penguin stories we watched Happy Feet.  This turned out to be a great way to help the kids brainstorm for ideas for the template Lindsey provides in her packet.  We also completed centers that were penguin based during D5 time.  The kids LOVED all the ones I got from Made for 1st Grade on TPT.  With our 4th grade buddies we made glyphs from Jennifer's TPT store.  I used the cute daddy penguin and the bonus glyph to create this hallway display.  We had the penguin buddies walking towards an igloo labeled Holy Redeemer and 3 larger penguins with our names.  Along the way we posted a speech bubble saying you can talk the talk but can you waddle the waddle it take faith, academic and service, which was this years theme to Catholic Schools Week.  They looked SO cute!!! 

As the final part I had the kids make their penguin reports.  I got this template from The Mailbox about 3 years ago and I love it!  I love how cute the penguins look all line up.  For these the kids just have to write one fact per page and then illustrate their fact.  I use this to discuss non-fiction text features.  I think the reason I love this unit son much is because penguins are so cute and it allows my kids to use so many their talents.  This years additions made the unit even more fun and tied in perfectly for the next post I am doing...