Origami March of the Penguins

Hello Bloggers!  Today I want to share with you a find from the internet.  My students and I began our Polar Region study last week.  The preschool at my school often does a penguin unit at the same time as our Polar Region unit.  My first graders really liked making the origami bats we made in October, so I thought it would be fun if we made something to inspire the preschoolers during their penguin study.  I found a great video of Michael LaFosse teaching penguin "storygami".  Michael tells a clever story of three penguin friends as he folds paper making the penguin.  The story is a great way to remember what the next step is in the folding process.  I loved it!  Please find the link below.

Click here for Michael LaFosse's penguin storygami!

I told the story to my first graders while folding the penguin and they were so excited to try it.  We decided to make an origami penguin mobile for the preschoolers.  It was fun to hear them repeat the story parts as we folded our penguins.  They were very proud of their work.  I found a wire hanger (don't tell Joan Crawford) and did my best to shape it in a spiral.  Then I pulled out my old glue gun and glued string to the penguins.  One dollop of glue on the hanger held the penguins to the "mobile".  When it was done it looked like penguins marching in a line - do you remember that scene from March of the Penguins?  My little first graders were so excited to present it to our preschool teacher.  They even asked it we could put it in our gift box.  The preschool teacher loved it!  She was really impressed with their work, even though she is not teaching a penguin unit this year.   Ah well, good intentions!  Here are some pictures of the mobile. 

We used black/white and gray/white paper for our penguins, but you could use some fun colors to make festive penguins! 
Hope you are doing something fun this weekend!



Bats and Facts!

Good grief!  Where does the time go?  Each time I sat down to blog I was sidetracked by something that would not wait!  Last weekend I was all set to settle in and blog away and then the snow began.  For those of you who are not on the north coast, the snow came to the tune of 22 inches here...the day before HALLOWEEN!  Can you believe that trick or treat had to be postponed?  The power outages were pretty wide spread, but all turned out well. 

We have been studying bats.  These fascinating creatures have been the focus of many projects we have completed in first grade.  I will post about our informational text soon, but today I would like to share with you our bat fact families!

We created our bats using construction paper, staples, googly eyes and a whole lot of love!  After we made them, each student was given three numbers to use to create a fact family.



The numbers the student had to work with are written on the bat's body.

The wings open so they look like they are flapping.  Inside one wing are the addition facts and the other wing has the subtraction facts.

The kiddos loved making these and they look adorable "flying" around the room!