Antarctica & the Penguins

We have been doing a very brief study of Antarctica with an emphasis on penguins. This picture of a penguin was one Alex did of "DLTK's Easy Penguin Craft" found at:
http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/measypenguin.html

Our main book about Antarctica has been: "Antarctica: A New True Book" by Lynn M. Stone. We also enjoyed: "Discovering Antarctica: Plants and Animals" by June Loves.

A wonderful book about an early Antarctica explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, is "Sea of Ice: The Wreck of the Endurance" by Monica Kulling. It is amazing how much these men (& animals) went through.

For fun, and many, many laughs, we've been reading "Mr. Popper's Penguins" by the Atwaters.

Other books we've enjoyed:

• "The Emperor Penguins New Clothes" by Perlman - we read this many nights in a row
• Penguin Pete books by Pfister
• Tacky books by Helen Lester - Alex LOVES these - very funny
• The Magic School Bus Chapter Book - "Penguin Puzzle" - about penguins, the Antarctica, and icebergs

Movies we watched:

• "March of the Penguins"
• "The Pebble and the Penguin" - very cute cartoon movie about an Adelie Penguin who is trying to give a beautiful pebble to his girl - since we didn't study other penguins (besides the Emperor penguins from March of the Penguins), I was surprised that these male penguins present a pebble to a female, and if she accepts it, they are mates for life!
• Mr. Popper's Penguin - cute movie evidently based on a picture book of Mr. Popper's Penguins

Alex also came up with something very cute by herself. We were playing with balloons and she placed one between her knees. We ended up waddling around like penguins and even trying to jump like they do.
I had really wanted to do this neat penguin study I'd found called Easy Make & Learn Projects: Penguins (Grades 1-3) - maybe we'll still do it sometime. I also had some other projects in mind, but I think we'll move on to our next topic in a couple of days.