Are penguins birds?
What a beautiful day we had today! The sun was shining brightly, it was warm, and we had A and L come back to Ohana for our last day of Winter School! We were so excited to welcome them back and couldn’t wait to play wit them! After we finished all of our morning jobs, we invited our old friends to play with the blocks and animal toys. We made towers and houses for the animals and our former flowers friends taught us a few new tricks they learned in their new school! Nimo called us to the craft table to do some origami. Nimo taught us how to make a cute little penguin! There were a few difficult spots, but we were able to complete them. At the very end, we added googly eyes to our penguins to make them much cuter.
A asked, “Can we vote which park we will go to today?”, we asked him which park he wanted to go to, and A replied, “Step Park”. Our teachers asked us if we would like to go Step Park and we all raised our hands. Without wasting any time, we all marched onward to Step Park and had a great time running around and playing tag. While we were playing with the big slide, the green area opened up so we went inside and played a few games. The first game we played was keeping the ball away from Nimo. He would chase after the ball and if he got the ball he wins. We had to carry the ball and run as fast as we could and if he was about to catch us, we passed the ball to our friends to make sure Nimo wouldn’t get the ball. We had excellent teamwork and did a great job keeping the ball! The next game we played was a tag game, but the Oni would have the ball and if the ball touched our friends they were out. We all took turns being the Oni and chased our friends.
When we got back to school we gathered into a circle to sing some songs together. Nimo then read us a book, “Where Is Home, Little Pip” by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, before we started our discussion about penguins. The story was about a baby penguin that got lost and couldn’t find her way back home. The baby penguin asked different arctic animals if they knew where “home” was, and the animals would tell the baby penguin where their homes were. However, each of the animal’s homes were different and not the one Pip knew. Mommy and Daddy finally found Pip and for them, home is anywhere, as long as the three are together.
Our question of the day today was, “Are Penguins Birds?”. Our friends were very sure penguins were birds and confident they knew what birds are. Nimo showed us pictures of animals and asked us if they were birds.
*Picture of a scorpion*
T: Birds fly.
A: Some birds can go into the ocean and take food.
K: That is not a bird because it doesn’t have wings and birds don’t have this sharp thing.
Z: That one is not a bird because it has lots of feet.
A: That is super small, birds need to be a little big.
*Turtle*
L: That’s not a bird because it has a shell.
*Bat*
T: That one has ears, birds don’t have ears like that.
A: This one only comes out at night time.
*Squirrel*
K: It’s feet are very small, and the whole this is very small.
A: Birds feet are pink, this one is grey.
*Tucan*
A: That is a bird.
L: It has a white mouth.
K: It’s called a beak.
We found out that birds are animals that can usually fly because they have wings, they have beaks, and they have feathers. There are some birds that cannot fly like penguins. We read in a book that they can’t fly because they don’t need to. Instead of flying the penguins changed their wings into fins so they can swim better and get more food.
A: What will happen to penguins if they keep changing?
K: Maybe they will turn into fish, scientists will have to do experiments to see if they will change into something else.
We then took a vote to see which game we would play today, and the majority voted for dodgeball. We had a great time throwing our newspaper snowballs! Y told his teachers, “I’m very good at throwing!”, and he really was! Our last game we played was Pictionary with our teachers. We drew something and our teachers had to guess what it was.
T drew a mouse, A drew a American Bison and Great White Shark, L drew a Unicorn and a Cat, Y drew A, A drew a monster, and K drew a Zoo.
Thank you very much everyone for a wonderful year! We can’t believe 2021 is already over as we prepare to welcome 2022 which we hope will be an ever better year! Happy holidays everyone and we will see you all next year!
Love,
Flowers