Penguins! (Freebie!)

 I have to say, I love to teach my Penguin unit! There's just something about penguins that makes me smile! It is so easy to incorporate science and geography into this unit too (and talk about a non-fiction bonanza - this is the perfect topic to expand your nonfiction library)! I'm starting off the New Year with my Penguin unit and then incorporating a Snowman unit in there too. So January will be pretty much all chilly dudes all month long! Today I'm going to share my favorite Penguin Unit read alouds (click here to see my Snowman list!) and some freebies:

So many great books - and only so many days in January to read them!

Have you ever done the Blubber Glove science experiment? It is so much fun and so easy to do! I am really looking forward to the writing my firsties will be able to do about it!

I'm trying my hand at a penguin glyph - I love glyphs because they're the perfect way to justify something "cutesie" (is it just me or do you feel the need to justify doing a craft project with your students?) Here is a finished picture of the ones my own children completed (they are my guinea pigs :) .

  I have 3 boys (5,7 and 10) and 1 daughter (she's 12) plus I made one too!

I think they came out adorable, don't you?

Here are some close ups:

I have to tell you, making the templates for these penguins was hard! I had my daughter come up with the basic concept (cause she's way more artistic than I am!) and then my husband helped me to draw everything to scale. So I am super proud of these and would love it if you left me a note if you're going to use them in your classroom! Almost forgot to tell you, I left the age blank on the graph and recording sheet so that you could change it for whatever grade you're using it with - make sure to fill the age part in before you make your copies! 

I plan on hanging blue butcher paper on my bulletin board, adding white snow mounds and arranging the penguins so some are on top of the mountains, some are sliding down the sides and some are standing in front. Then  I will spray it all with glitter and we'll have a great bulletin board for January! Which title do you like better? "Slip Sliding Into a New Year!" or "Sliding Back to School!" ? For those of you who don't have a Scribd account, you can also grab this penguin glyph for free in my TPT store, just click here :)

Penguin Glyph