Sarah the Penguin

 Abigail is in kindergarten and her class is doing a study series on penguins.  She brought a form home telling of her assignment.  First off, the class adopted a penguin in the Falkland Islands.  I read a little about the World Wildlife Fund adoption program and it sounds pretty neat.  I also learned that Emperor penguins can grow to 4 feet tall and weight 80 pounds…that’s the size of Isaac!  Anyhow, her class decided to name their adopted penguin Crystal. 

Each student was to research a type of penguin, write a report, and make a model of their penguin.  There are around 23 students in her class and each student was assigned a different type of penguin.  I had no idea that there are more than 20 different types of penguins!  Holy moley!  Anyhow, Abigail was assigned the Little Blue Penguin so we hit wikipedia and learned a lot about Little Blue Penguins.  I read each section to Abigail and she responded back with sentences that described what she thought was important.  I typed in her words and she completed her first school report!  You can read her report here if you’d like.

Next, we had to work on a model of the little blue penguin.  We brainstormed a little to come up with a base around which to build her penguin.  We finally settled on a 2-liter bottle (it’s about the same size as a Little Blue Penguin).  Emily and I found a pear shaped ornament holder on sale at the local craft store which worked perfectly as a head.  I had to help some with cutting the bottle but Abigail sawed the wooden dowels for legs and used the hot glue gun to fasten it all together.  So, we attached all of the pieces and she covered it all with masking tape (to give her a base to paint and to hopefully give it a feather appearance).  Abigail finished painting it last night and glued the eyes on to complete Sarah, the Little Blue Penguin.

That’s a funny thing about Abigail…she names almost everything..and she always uses the names Sarah (with an ‘h’, of course), Elizabeth, or Kylie.

Another funny thing about Abigail, she was not named Grace for a reason.  The poor child painted the floor, the table, herself and me in the course of painting Sarah.  I can’t help but laugh most times- I am pretty hard on our dining room table as well.  I just hope our house makes it through!