Estimating with Water Bottle Penguins

One of the most important lessons I learned from the National Board process was that every activity or lesson taught must have a goal that supports the unit of study.  So, I was looking for a cool (literally), new bulletin board idea and I found these penguins on Pinterest.  When I spotted them, I thought they would be fun for my students to make, but I noticed that there was no academic goal attached to them.  I thought that they could be tied to math if I had students estimate how many cotton balls were in the body of their penguins.

So, I sent a notice home asking for donations of cotton balls and received quite a few bags!  Thank you so much to all of the parents who helped out.  Here are some pictures of the completed bulletin board.