Fact Finding

This week the children have been really busy finding out lots of information about penguins.

The children have asked lots of questions and we have found out lots of facts by using information books and the internet. We then made our very own information books and also carried out some very important experiments to find out how penguins stay warm and dry. 

From our research and experiments, we found that penguins keep warm because they have blubber (a thick layer of fat) under their overlapping feathers to keep the heat inside their bodies and they also huddle in a large group with other penguins. We made a blubber glove and put it in cold water and compared it by having one hand with no blubber glove in cold water. The children then tested their own ideas of how to keep warm using different material gloves. 

We then talked about how penguins stay dry and compared it to how we do to stay dry. We found out that penguins have a waxy layer on their feathers produced by a very special oil gland that they have. We then used wax crayons to make our very own penguins and sprayed them with water, the children were amazed to see what happened - The water stayed on top of the wax!