1. Last night, we started reading Mr. Popper's Penguins
. I intended this to be a read aloud for both boys, but DS4, showed little interest and mostly played around us. We read a lot this morning since we have colds and coughs and needed an easy day. 2. DS8 used a fabulous, free, on-line resource, Sheppard Software, to continue studying the continents and oceans of the world. He enjoys the way the program offers varying levels of difficulty; he'll often start with the easiest and work his way up to the most challenging, all in one sitting. He can now identify all the continents and oceans.
2. We read some background information on penguins and the environment from the Bridges curriculum.
3. I asked DS8 to choose a penguin book to read from the stack I brought home from the library. He selected Emperor Penguins
(by Roberta Edwards.) He was intrigued by the way the coloring of penguins acts as camouflage...dark as see in the water from above, light as see from the water below. His interest was high enough that I asked him to make something showing what he'd learned. I suggested a flap book but he told me he wanted to make a "huge penguin" so he chose the size paper he wanted, drew a penguin, and wrote about penguin camouflage. 4. We read information from Bridges about how penguins adapt to the cold.
5. He located the oceans of the world on a map and wrote them in.
6. We used this cool site to calculate how far it is from Antarctica to the United States. The site allows you to move the destination, so he could see how far many different places are from Antarctica.
I'm very excited about a water temperature activity scheduled next. Stay tuned. ;)
