Tacky Craft Coming Soon to TpT!

Do your kids love Tacky the Penguin as much as my firsties do?  During our investigation of penguins these past couple of weeks I think my class made me read every Tacky book there is.  They just could not get enough of the odd little guy.

Check out this super cute Tacky the Penguin craft we did this past week with our 6th grade buddies.  This was the perfect way to wrap-up our whole penguin unit. 

I'm going to put a template on TpT soon for anyone who wants to recreate Tacky for themselves.  Stay tuned! 

Penguin Research Projects

First off, I have to say how extremely proud I am of everyone for doing such an awesome job on these research projects.  This was not a simple activity.  This project took a while (longer than expected, too, because of our "cold days") and had multiple steps that built upon one another.  I knew these kids could do it, though, and they did amazing. 

 The class was split up into 5 groups of three and 1 group of 2.  Each group was then assigned a species of penguin and given an information sheet about their bird. 

On the first day the groups read through their information sheets and highlighted important facts.  After they finished reading each section and highlighting, they recorded their key details on a graphic organizer.

 After their graphic organizers were completed, the groups could begin on their posters.  Each poster had to contain: a title (what species of penguin they researched), the names of everyone in their group, and  all of the information that had been recorded on their graphic organizer (appearance, enemies, food, and a cool fact).  Mrs. Gordon, our ELL teacher, had also printed off information sheets for each of the groups once she found out about the project.  Some of the groups used that information, too.  A couple of students even brought in information they printed at home to share with their group.

For pictures, the groups had the option of using printed photos from the internet, or illustrating their own images.  Each group was given a picture on their information sheet and on the sheet from Mrs. Gordon.  Some students brought great pictures they printed at home.  A couple of groups drew some wonderful pictures, too.  

Chapter 7 is a Wrap

We finished Chapter 7 of our math series this week.  We have learned so many new math things this year it's amazing! 

Chapter 7 was all about Geometry. 

We reviewed our basic 2-D shapes like a square, rectangle, circle, hexagon, rhombus, and trapezoid. 

We learned about attributes and how to describe our 2-D shapes by their different attributes (name of shape, number of sides, number of corners, size of shape, its color (if it has one).  We even learned a new game, called "Attribute Train," where you have to see how long of a train you can make with our attribute blocks by matching up shapes based only on one attribute (pictured above). 

Then we learned about polygons and how to tell whether a shape is or is not a polygon (there are rules if you want to be a polygon, you know). 

We also learned about new 3-D shapes like a sphere, cube, pyramid, cylinder, rectangular prism, and cone. 

Finally, we learned about symmetry.  We made our own symmetrical shapes with patterns blocks and traced them during one of our math centers (pictured above), we identified whether or not different images contained lines of symmetry, and we also made perfectly symmetrical paper hearts by folding our paper in half first then cutting out half of our heart. 

All along the way we continued to practice our math facts, both addition and subtraction (and we're now working on facts up to 20).  One of the favorite ways to practice facts is by playing with our "Power Towers" (pictured above).  Facts are written on the bottoms of cups, and if a student answers the fact correctly they keep the cup; if not it goes on the bottom of the stack.  The player who builds the highest tower (or who has the most cups) when all of the cups run out, wins.