P is for Penguin

Sorting through the backlog of photos and posts and realizing I still have some from FEBRUARY!  Oh, my.  Anyway, here are some of our penguin highlights.

I put together a simple sensory bin for the boys with cotton balls, blue duplos, and a couple penguin and fish that came with our (generic) duplo set.  Isaiah really still enjoys jumping in on stuff like this, and it is a balance of trying to give Zeke space to explore on his own but also giving Isaiah time to still just enjoy play and things like this.

 Speaking of play, a favorite of the week was just doing some pretend play as penguins.  Here is a "papa" protecting his "egg."

It took some creative turns, and the boys were collecting quite a lot to make their penguins comfortable, like blankets and fuzzy foot pajamas.  I'm not too sure how Ironman fits into it all, but maybe the baby penguin needed another protector?  :)

 We were working on tally marks, which Isaiah took to quite easily, and measuring.  I made a quick little chart on a white board with a few of Isaiah's penguin toys listed, and he used tally marks to record how many cubes tall each one was.

We got the idea from our curriculum and from this blog to do a little illustration of how fat helps keep animals warm.  I froze several plastic bags of water, which made for some fun shapes of "icebergs," and we observed how much of them was below the water when we put them in our bowl.  The boys tried to first play in the ice water a bit.

 They soon got tingly fingers, so we pulled out the plastic bags I had prepared.  We can't get shortening here, and butter is pretty expensive, so I used coconut oil, which is pretty plentiful here.  I scooped a bunch into one bag, and then I put another bag inside that in the midst of the coconut oil and had the boys put their hands in the inner bag.  Isaiah has some issues with new textures and creams and squishy things, so I figured this would make it quicker and easier to have it ready and have him just stick his hand in the bag.  He still wasn't thrilled, but he gave it a try long enough to see that his hand didn't feel cold when he put it in the water that way.

 Probably the favorite (and biggest) project from our week was to make a poster of three species of penguins--actual size!  I let Isaiah choose three species (well, I suggested we do Emperors, but he picked the other two) from the National Geographic Kids book we have about penguins.  He chose Humboldt and Fairy.  The book listed the average height for each species, so it was the perfect resource.  It also had a picture of each, and Isaiah was, of course, insistent that the markings be colored to match exactly with the picture.  He is a details kid!

It's too bad our wall where we hung it has a trim around the bottom that sticks out because we couldn't hang it very well flush with the floor, so you can't tell, but Isaiah and the Emperor Penguin turned out to be the exact same height.  That was really exciting for him!

Zeke even got in on some of the coloring action...with very close supervision from older brother, of course!  Zeke was really excited about being part of it, and he was trying to be really careful.

Ezekiel also enjoyed a snowflake matching activity from 1+1+1=1 to round out some winter fun.