On the agenda: "Mr. Popper's Penguins" and an Antarctic study for first grade

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It is my aim to occasionally share with you readers some of my favorite lessons and projects. These become my favorite because they are interesting to both me and my students. For example, each winter, I like to read aloud “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” by Richard and Florence Atwater to my firsties.



This book is a classic. Though it was published in the 1930s and includes some outdated terms, I take the time to explain those things, and the students wind up loving the story! I think it gives them a fuller picture of life through a different context than usual. Why would I want to limit them to only modern novels? I think it’s great exposure to some of the concepts, beliefs and troubles of the time.

Reading aloud this book for about 10 minutes a day took about five weeks this year. I like to take it slow in order to check for understanding with the students. Along with this read-aloud, the last two weeks of the book, we dove into a full-fledged study on Antarctica!

This is an advantage to having a self-contained classroom. I teach both science and social studies now, and I incorporated those subjects into our Antarctic study. Here are some highlights:.


The students made different kinds of Antarctic penguins using construction paper. They ended up being pretty cute!

                                                               Penguins anchor chart


The South Pole using watercolor and glitter. 


Some books on Antarctica I got from the library that the students used for research.


This was a character map I created when I was reading the story and periodically allowed students to add to it. 


This is an Antarctic food web. It gets a little complicated, but I think it was a great introduction for them.

This was such a fun unit to do, and I loved connecting different subjects with this theme. We did a lot of projects and research, which I feel is what makes meaningful study in the classroom. If you are interested, here is my unit on Teachers Pay Teachers:


Too cute!




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