P is for Penguin!

Oh how I have always just LOVED these cute little fellas and I couldn't wait to do a week of ALL THINGS PENGUIN with the girls. I found SO many adorable activities and games on the Internet, most came from the Making Learning Fun website. If you just click on the Themes tab, you can search for anything your heart desires :) Love that site!

Monday started off a bit rough for us. A very early morning minor disaster (Little Bear fell out of Mommy and Daddy's bed and managed to get a pretty good gash on her little chin) caused all of us except Tiny to get hardly any sleep :( SO, to start the week....we spent Monday morning cuddled up on the couch together reading all of our penguin books :) Here is a list of our favorites in no particular order:

Busy Penguins (board book)
Planet Earth: Baby Penguins (board book)
Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World (LB's favorite)
The Emperor's Egg
Tacky the Penguin (another fav)
Tacky in Trouble (yet another fav)
Penguin Pete

Penguin ABC Fish Feeding:
After a more UNeventful night, we got started right away on Tuesday morning with our first activity. This is an ADORABLE game and we ALL had so much fun with it! I covered a cereal box with white wrapping paper (I just so happened to have left from wrapping a wedding gift IONS ago!) and made the little penguin to go on the front. I cut a whole in the mouth large enough for the fish pieces to fit in. Little Bear had to match the lowercase letters with the capital ones and then feed them to "Petey" at the same time. I was the "voice" of Petey and it got to be rather funny when I would ask for specific letters. We were all getting very goofy and didn't even end up finishing the game, but she did do MOST of the letters. The ones we didn't finish, I just asked her to identify them and she did.

Even Tiny got involved in the feeding...she would pick the lowercase letter and then Little Bear would have to find the capital letter to match.

P-Penguin dot to dot:
Worksheet Queen strikes again...she LOVED this paper! I think she just loves the fact that she gets to use a "grown up girl" pencil to do these ;) She has never done a dot to dot of any kind, numbers or letters so I wasn't sure how this would go. This one was a bit more challenging because she had to identify the lowercase letters and draw a line to each and she did GREAT! You can see just how proud she is...even with her little bandages on her chin :D

Penguin "P":
This neat idea came from....well, someone's wonderful blog and I thought I had it bookmarked and I've looked everywhere for it but can't locate it (I apologize to whoever came up with this wonderful idea for not giving proper credit!). Anyway, terribly CUTE :) and Little Bear thoroughly enjoyed gluing it all together. (Don't worry, she's NOT drugged in this picture, just has a slight fear of the camera flash so we get the occasional squinty eyes...even when I DON'T use the flash!)

"P" Scavenger Hunt:
After all this talk about the letter "P," the girls (LB did most of the "work") went on a hunt to find things that began with the letter. I had to give a few hints at first, but after gathering a few items, she was finding things on her own. Here are the things pictured: picnic basket, letter "p" from our foam puzzle, penguin book, piano, pig, purse, puzzle....and of course I can't forget....two Pretty Princesses wearing Pajamas :)

Penguin Shape Counting:
Ugh, another worksheet you say....well, right now she likes them and they are a quick and easy way for me to get an idea of some of her skills. This one not only got her counting, but it also helped her to learn how to write numerals in spaces, which we had never done. She counted the shapes by herself (I was shocked that she got them mostly right, other than needing a little help with the tricky crescent shapes on the penguin's bowl). Then I wrote the number in the blank very lightly and she was supposed to trace over it. She started out great, but then wanted to do her "own thing," which I still let her do at this point.

Penguin Fish Cracker Count:
Another great one from Making Learning Fun! We did this one at snack time, of course and it was a huge hit! Little Bear laid all the penguins out on the table and fed them the correct number of fish crackers. Every now and then she needed a little assistance keeping up with how many she had placed on already, but it was great practice in counting up. We even had a few teeny tiny lessons in addition and subtraction along the way ;) And of course, we all got to eat the penguin's fish crackers when she was done! These cards would also be great to have the child put in numerical order, but we didn't have time for that this go around!

Footprint/handprint Penguin Craft:
I did this with my first graders back in the day, but I have seen this idea on tons of blogs and sites too. I wanted to do something that incorporated both girls in the craft, but that didn't involve lots of preparation or "MESS" ;) So....I had the girls put on a shoe and I traced around LB's foot on black paper and Tiny's foot on white. These two parts made up the body. I then traced LB's hands, with fingers closed, which made the wings. The most challenging part was tracing Tiny's tiny hands, closed fists on orange for the feet. She was actually more cooperative than I expected, but it was still a challenge to say the least ;) (Challenge is her middle name, by the way!). After I cut out all the parts, Little Bear glued them all on the paper.

She drew the eyes with chalk and added some pulled apart cotton balls for the snow and there you have it: Bobby the Penguin (no idea where the name Bobby came from, but that was what came out of her mouth immediately, without thought!). We like him!

Waddle, Waddle, Waddle!
After singing the song from THIS blog post MANY, MANY times, we did a little waddling ourselves :) I helped Little Bear secure a ball between her knees and then try to walk/waddle across the room. Although she had GREAT difficulty doing it, it was so incredibly fun and funny! We had such a good time with this and it was definitely a test in "taking it slow" since we know penguins are not fast waddlers, by any means.

And more.....
Listened to/watched the story, Rumble, Grumble, Gurgle Roar on Nick Jr. games
Listened to/watched the story, Penguin, Penguin on Starfall.com
Watched March of the Penguins movie (I must say that I learned so much by watching this!)
Watched Happy Feet for family movie night on Friday!

Mama's favorite moment:
I did some cleaning/re-arranging in the girls' room on Friday morning and we decided that this little table (which was mine when I was little) and chairs will have to be temporarily relocated to Grandma's house. But in the meantime, I brought it out to the kitchen and let the girls eat lunch there together. Miss Tiny Challengepants has been REALLY REALLY REALLY wanting to sit in a big chair without a highchair or booster lately, so this was the perfect solution (although she did manage to do a flip out of it and land on her head...that's just how she rolls!). They both scarfed down their lunch and had so much fun sitting across from each other :) Little Bear is a huge helper to me and is constantly offering to feed Tiny, meaning getting her bites of food on the fork and handing them to her. And there are days when Tiny refuses ALL food from me, but will eat anything her sister hands her! I just adore their sisterly love :D

Welcome February!!!! We are taking this whole month to focus on LOVE...not just the Valentine's Day aspect of Love, but the deeper meaning. The Totally Tots blog had some terrific ideas for this, week 1 found HERE. Our first week (starting today) will center around 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and we are so excited to get started tonight as a family!

Happy Groundhog Day tomorrow...here's hoping Gretchen Groundhog DOES NOT see her shadow in all this snow we have here in S. Indiana! ;)