Penguin Wrap Up

Holy butterballs!!! (Yes- one of my students really shouted that out in a middle of a graphing lesson today!)- What a day!


We started the day with one of my turkeys sweet little kiddies complaining how "boooorrrrrrreeeeddddd" he was (I get it- they're seven. They're kids.) And it may have been because of the lack of sleep, or the million things on my to-do list that are not getting done, or that my stress level that is up to here, or it may have been because of the fact that I put my underwear on inside out today (on accident- I was that tired... I didn't even notice until lunchtime), but I just about lost it. I yelled kindly explained to him that I, and all other teachers, work very, very hard to make their lessons fun and exciting and engaging, and that we care so much about them. I then continued to ask him if he wanted me to cry. (Probably not the most professional thing to do, but whatever.) Because that's what I was about to do. Cry. Because I really do work hard and his comment was just not what I wanted or needed to hear at that moment. 


This all went down before 8am. The good news is, all of the other kids felt sorry for me that I was about to start crying so they were really nice to me for the rest of the day. ;) 


On a brighter note, we wrapped up our penguin unit! We finished our friendly letters, and here are some of my favorite quotes: 

"Penguins can't fly but they're birds and I feel sad that they can't fly." Me too, me too. Those poor penguins.

"I wish you and me could see one. That would be cool. And you know what would be real cool is that you could touch an emperor penguin and it bites you." Nice. These are supposed to be friendly letters. Geez. 

I also found a GREAT free app for our iPod touches called Pocket Penguins. 

I found the app at a great blog, Monkeying Around with Technology. You can read her post here!

The app was developed by the California Academy of Sciences and offers live views of its colony of African Penguins 24 hours a day. You can use three different cameras in the exhibit, including an underwater camera, and "watch for natural behaviors including courting, establishing and defending territories, and collecting nest materials. The next time a couple produces and begins incubating eggs, biologists plan to deploy a nest cam to share the egg incubation and chick rearing process." Check out the website here.  

I was a bit skeptical at first, but it turned out to be AMAZING!!! Here is a screen shot of the penguins:

Those are real penguins waddling around, jumping in the water, having some fun. The kids LOVED seeing this. And it's much cheaper (and less stressful!) than a field trip to Sea World. We even got to watch a live feeding with the keeper who told all of these amazing facts about the penguins! The kids were so engaged and loved every second of it.

I had the kiddies fill out an observation form while they observed the penguins. Here are a few:

Bored my you-know-what!!!