Researching Penguins

This week we learned about King penguins, Little Blue penguins and predators.  We sorted and compared Rockhoppers and King penguins, and created and played a variety of penguin games to practice our addition facts, reading 2-digit numbers and counting by 10's and 1's.  Next week we will learn about Gentoos and Chinstraps.  Tuesday will be a studio day for math, with other K-2 teachers visiting our classroom for math.
We learned about how forces act on structures by experimenting with a one-story structure and a tower.  We also learned about how civil engineers make structures stronger and more stable.  Next week we will conduct an experiment to compare strength of beam, arch, and deep beam bridges.  We will also talk about different reasons a particular bridge type is the best choice to construct.
Last Friday we shared our expert books and have moved on to researching penguins during Writers' Workshop.  We have been using the custom search engine I created on our webpage to do some of this research.  It can be accessed at home by going to the Firefly team page.  It is on the left hand side at the bottom and is called "Penguin Search Engine".  The search engine includes penguin sites that are kid friendly.  We have talked in school about how to skip the "advertisement" sites and go to the sites included with the search engine.  Although these sites are kid friendly, your child will probably still need some assistance reading the information.  We will be choosing a kind of penguin to become an expert about next week, and will begin writing our reports.
Another reminder to sign up for spring conferences on the Firefly webpage.  Class photos are coming home today in Friday Folders along with a a class list for Valentine's Day.

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