Penguins

Our trip to Tasmania created an interest in penguins as we visited a little blue penguin nesting site there. Lamb loves to mimic the noises they were making!

We got several penguin themed books for our book basket including one of blue penguins which nest exclusively in Australia.

I made some 'breeds of penguin' cards for our shelves and we have spent some time talking about their similarities and differences. Lamb's favourite word at the moment is 'similar'!

We did some penguin themed activity sheets.

I found this poem about penguins and typed it up with the number words in red.

We go through the poem identifying the numbers and the words that match and take a cartoon penguin away each time. I have introduced Lamb to addition but not subtraction, counting upwards but not counting back so I thought this would be a good start.

THEN we got the measuring tape out and drew some penguins in chalk.

Here Lamb is clicking the lock over so that the tape doesn't move while Mummy draws a penguin at the correct height.

And here's Mummy drawing the penguin (Lamb took the photo, pretty good job I thought!)

From left to right....little blue penguin, adelie penguin, chinstrap penguin and emperor penguin (please forgive the crude drawings: chalk on brick is a very unforgiving medium!)

And then Lamb and Cherry 'painted' the penguins with water thereby cleaning the wall.

And finally we watched 'March of the penguins' which really was fabulous. Lamb asked an incredible amount of questions all the way through but was surprisingly stalwart in the face of penguin eggs, chicks and their parents meeting their ends. Highly recommended family viewing!