Fun With Penguins!

We have been working on a unit about Penguins! 

We have penguins everywhere! 

Over the last few weeks, we have been watching penguins on the live webcams found at the Vancouver Aquarium.  The penguins were watching their keeper clean up their enclosure!  At one point, one of the penguins cuddled up to the keeper and he reached down and gave

 the penguin a pet!  Very cute!   You can find the link for the webcam here. 

We also watched the webcam at the Seaworld in Orlando.  This one is neat too!  These penguins are very noisy!  You can find the link for this webcam here. 

 We read some non-fiction books about penguins!  We learned a lot of interesting facts. Did you know that penguins like to surf?

Then we did a penguin research report.  First, we read the facts and decided which category would be the best for each fact.  Our four categories were:  What They Look Like, What They Eat, About the Babies, and Cool Facts!  Then we coded the facts with the beginning letter for each category and the children glued the facts to the corresponding page. I have created a Penguin Research report package that is almost ready to upload to Teachers Pay Teachers!  Everything to create these penguin reports is included in the package.  Just trying to find time to upload the file!  Watch for it!  

We turned the report into a penguin! 

We have also created a QR code for the Vancouver Aquarium webcam that we have attached to our penguin reports. I used the QRstuff website to generate the codes.  You can find the link for this site here. 

It seems a bit like magic to point the iPad at a little box and have penguins appear!  Too much fun!

Fun with Elves!

I am trying to catch up on my blogging!  I wanted to share this great app and activity even though Christmas has come and gone!  Keep it in mind for next year!  For the month of December, Sparkles, our Elf on the Shelf and Gus, our resident ghost and trickster have been leaving surprises.  I used the Santa Spy Cam app to catch them in the act.  I used this app last year after reading about it on the Ms. Pana Says website.  This site is always a goldmine of good ideas for me as she has lots of great ideas about using technology in the classroom. I downloaded a different scene this year and created this video to share with my class.  The video is saved to your camera roll on the iPad. You can then upload it on your Youtube channel or just view it on your iPad from the camera roll.  We caught Sparkles’ friends in the act!  You can see our classroom in the video! The elves left us a note!  This app is way too much fun!  The children really enjoyed it and we viewed it many times!  The Santa Spy Cam app is really cool.  Take a look at this app at the app store or online and see the amazing things that are possible with this app!

Here are a few of the treats the Sparkles left for us!  I was able to find a lot of great ideas on Pinterest for Elf on the Shelf antics.  The snowball fight with mini marshmallows between the dinosaurs and Sparkles was a big hit.  Of course, we had to eat up the marshmallows to prevent further snowball fights. 

Each morning, Sparkles left a variety of treats such as books, puzzles, games, and so on.  They loved the little sets of checkers games that were left one morning! I found lots of the treats at the dollar store.  I have a lot of Christmas book titles that Sparkles recommended! 

The children will be sorry to see Sparkles go!