Penguins, Promethean, a Plethora of Pictures, and Pumped for P-Friday...!

Alliteration at its finest!  I claim poetic license on that "P-Friday".  Whatever works!

Anyhow...

Here are two of my favorite things we did this week.

I shared earlier how I had acquired a Promethean ActivSlate to use in my classroom.  And we are loving it!  On Wednesday, we did a sink/float lab.  I made a quick table in Publisher, added some clipart and shapes for the things we were testing, and the kids used the tablet to move the items into either the sink or float category, depending on what the prediction of the class was.  It was a HIT!  And super easy!  Since I don't have an actual Promethean Board, I'm not sure about making the flip charts and stuff... but this worked perfectly and was truly super easy!  On a side note, I also typed up words using Tux Paint and then we used the paint feature to circle "hunks and chunks" to practice decoding.  I love this ActivSlate!

So.  Back to sink and float:

 

Then we tested out each item and re-evaluated our predictions.  It was GREAT!

We also read and learned about penguins.  Each of my table groups made have/can/are charts for penguins, we combined our ideas and typed one that we displayed on the LCD screen to use for ideas, and then they wrote informational paragraphs about penguins.  And, in my classroom, no hallway display writing piece is complete without a super cute craftivity to go along with it... so check this out:

I traced the body which they cut out.  Then each kid got a different color hat and had to trade around with others to get three different colored hat pieces.  We added the googley eyes, feet, beaks, and the hat.  Then we mixed shaving cream and glue to make the white bellies.  Did you know that their white bellies help protect them from predators...?  I didn't!  So we learned that when they are swimming and predators look up, they may confuse their white underside as a reflection of the sky!

You can get your own "hat" pattern here:

Ok!  That's a wrap for me for the week!  Tomorrow I'm going shopping and Sunday will be laundry and school for me.

Don't forget about the giveaway for my prefix/suffix pack!  All you have to do is head to that post (click the pic below!) and leave a comment that includes a word with a prefix/suffix.  I'll announce the winner on Saturday morning!