Small Friends School News: Little Penguins in the OC!

To catch a glimpse of what we did this week, just check out our hallway where you will find some little penguins welcoming you!

The kids made these adorable penguins by sponge painting black and white, then adding feet, eyes, and a beak. So fun!

There was more penguin fun at our other activity table. The children chose a penguin with a number and the corresponding dots. They worked on one to one counting and picked out the correct number of goldfish crackers to "feed" the penguin. Bonus - they got to eat the crackers afterwards!

At carpet time, the kids heard a non-fiction book about penguins and learned a sweet penguin song where they got to try out their own penguin waddling while balancing an egg on their feet!

They also enjoyed doing penguin and polar bear puzzles, as well as some of our other puzzles in the room.

Penguins were also part of play at the water tub. It was filled with water, foam "icebergs", and penguins! The kids had a blast scooping up all the penguins into containers and pouring water.

Various Arctic animals were over on the light table along with salt "snow" and glass ice cubes.

The kids found a snowy hill at the building table where they could put together pieces to create skiiers and people to play in the wintery wonderland.

Over in the texture table there were trucks and buckets. The texture table is a great place for kids to retreat to when they need a quiet place and crave a sensory experience.

The kids were invited to try a different kind of sensory experience at our activity table with ice cube paints! We froze liquid watercolors in ice cube trays and they used these to glide some beautiful colors on their paper.

Inspired by the book Whose Footprints?, we played around with the idea of making and identifying animal footprints. Using white playdough as snow, the kids made footprints using different animals and our parent helper tried to guess whose footprints they were.

We did more with scarves at carpet time and had lots of fun with a Jack in the Box chant and a hiding your scarf song. The possibilities with scarves are endless!