Penguins!

Our second "Arctic" animal this month is Penguins!

Book Time!

The first book I read was "Pirate and the Penguin" by Patricia Storms. This book is ridiculous and cute! Just what 4 year olds love!

Next I read "Tree Cheers for Tacky" by Helen Lester. The kids really liked acting out Tacky's silly cheers. It was a good one to get them moving as they were starting to squirm and ask to do the craft!

As we put our floor mats away, the kids practiced their penguin waddle! It was pretty adorable to watch. :)

Craft Time!

I found the penguin mask template on this website. They had originally made them out of foam and just glued the pieces together, but I knew the kids LOVE to color with markers, so I printed out the template onto white cardstock, cut it out and let them color them whatever colors they wanted! Some of them colored them exactly like a penguin looks like and others had rainbow colored penguins! Once they finished, I taped a wooden stick so they could hold them up to their faces. They had a blast pretending to be penguins and searching for fish as they dove in the "ocean"!

Polar Bears!

Our first theme of this wonderfully snowy year is The Arctic. Our first animal that we're learning about is Polar Bears!

Book Time!
I first read the book "Snow Bear's Surprise" by Piers Harper. The kids really loved this one as it is a soft-to-touch book. All the animals feel fuzzy and at the end the northern lights are glittery! Snow Bear wants to surprise his Mum by decorating their cave so all his arctic friends help him to find ways to make it look just right!

Next I read "The Three Snow Bears" by Jan Brett. It's the story of Goldilocks and the three bears set in Jan Brett's wonderfully illustrated arctic terrain!

The kids were getting pretty squirmy by this point, so I had them stand up and we did the following poem with actions!

Poem Time!
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Turn around.
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Make no sound.

Polar bear, Polar bear,
Dance on your toes.
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Touch your nose.

Polar bear, Polar bear,
Show your paws.
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Hide your claws.

Polar bear, Polar bear,
Reach up high
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Shut your eyes tight.

Polar bear, Polar bear,
Wake up now.
Polar bear, Polar bear,
Take a bow.

(This verse I came up with just before the kids left for the day)
Polar bears, Polar bears,
Say your good-byes
Polar bears, Polar bears,
Give me high fives

Craft Time!
This Polar Bear puppet craft (and poem) was taken from twigglymagazine.com where I found a printout of a Polar bear, cut out the head, hands and feet and glued them to a brown paper bag (which I had painted with white acrylic paint the night before). The kids love gluing everything themselves (as 4 and 5 years olds often do) and they had a blast running around and growling like polar bears.

We wrapped up the program by acting out the poem one more time and getting arctic stickers on our hands!