Penguin Palooza

My students are probably like many of yours, they love animals! During our snow-filled month, my third grade class took some time to learn all about penguins. To begin, each student pulled the name of a species of penguin from a bucket. I found the list of species here. If you have a larger class size this could also be done in pairs, small groups, or as a center activity.

After choosing their penguin, each student began conducting research on different aspects of their penguin. My students are always engaged when technology is involved, and doing research is one thing they actually love doing!  If you would like to do this project with your students, you can find everything you need here at my Teachers Pay Teachers store- https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Penguin-Research-Project-3601459.

I created a data sheet with questions for the students to research, it included various facts about the penguin such as height, diet, and habitat. Having these questions ready allowed students to work independently as they tried to research and find their own answers. I let the students us Google, but I also showed them some helpful websites. Two of our most popular used were http://www.penguinworld.com and https://seaworld.org/en/animal-info/animal-infobooks/penguin/

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After all of the research was complete I decided to add in an exciting art project. Since each student knew how tall their penguins were, each student had to create their own life-size penguin! The only supplies needed for this project are bulletin board paper, rulers, and some coloring item (oils pastels turn out the best.) 

First, have students measure the paper to be the height of their penguin. Tell them their drawing should touch both the top and the bottom edges of the paper. Teachers, make sure to create a lot of room for this project, we took up the entire floor! 

Next, each student can draw a penguin to look exactly like what they researched. I created a PowerPoint slide to show on the Smartboard with a picture of all the penguins, but you could also have students draw their own picture while researching. After drawing, we added a information card to each penguin so people can read all about each species.

When displayed in the hallway, you can see the distinct differences in the species, and they look like a happy group of perfectly posed penguins to me!