Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Penguins Printable Book & Craft


Penguins are SUCH cool birds. When I was rinsing out an empty bottle of coffee creamer I couldn’t help but notice its shape; it reminded me of a penguin’s body! When I had another bottle emptied, it was time to start our lesson in these flightless birds.

We read Gail Gibbon’s book Penguins! and learned that there are 17 species of penguins, they all live in the Southern Hemisphere, and could fly 1 million years ago.


Then I got some felt, googly eyes, polyfil, our low-temp glue gun, and two sharpie markers (black and silver). For the clear bottle, we stuffed polyfil inside it.


Then I outlined some flippers and a body using silver marker onto half a sheet of folded black felt. My son cut it out. We glued it around the bottle.



Then he cut feet out of stiffened orange felt and we glued them to the bottom. For the white-capped bottle, we added an extra hood of black felt and some black detailing with the sharpie.

All that was left to do was glue on some googly eyes. Voila! Ricky and Rocky the penguins were finished!


After the craft was done, I gave my son some blank pages I’d made so he could document all the different types of penguins. I knew he'd love this; he's STILL adding pages and birds to the printable bird lover's field guide we made last summer!

Download the blank penguin book pages I designed here.




He used the Penguin Parade guide the end of Bob Barner’s Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere! book as a guide to complete the pages, coloring the penguins to look like the pictures, writing their names, height, and where they live.



This was a great exercise in studying and recognizing all the differences in penguins!

15 comments:

  1. What a brilliant craft! I love when you find something, see a shape in it and hey presto... an amazing craft!

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

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  2. Love that! Thanks for sharing the printables, as well. :)

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  3. Your penguins are so cute! What a great use of recycled bottles. I just put this on my list to do in the next couple weeks. It looks like so much fun!

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  4. These are adorable ~ I just found your blog and I'm your newest follower :)


    Randi @ Teach It With Class
    My TPT Store
    My Facebook Page

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  5. These little guys are so adorable! I love them!

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  6. These are so cute, I have a few of them saved we may need to try them with the girls :)

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  7. I love both the printable and the craft. Penguins are very popular in the house - my house draws them for our friends, and they think that it's only fitting to give us penguins for holidays. We have about 100 of them (not live, of course). Soon we could stage 365 Penguins book (great book, by the way).

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  8. Those are so cute. Love your penguins. I would love for you to share at Bacon Times fri-monday linky, anything goes.
    http://bacontimewiththehungryhypo.blogspot.com/

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  9. Oh! And I just threw away an empty coffee creamer!

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  10. My middle boys loves penguins. I will be borrowing some of your ideas to use with him when he asks for more penguin stuff and I can't think of anything else. Thanks again for linking up at {Free} Printables Linky Party!

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  11. Super cute! I thought I'd commented when you first put this up so I'm glad you linked to Science Sunday!

    I'll have to remember this when we get to penguins in a month or so.

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  12. They are great! what cute penguins. Thanks for linking to Fun Sparks x

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  13. Love these penguins - so creative. momstown's having a winter linkup party this week - love for you to join in!
    http://momstown-artsandcrafts.momstown.ca/node/511

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  14. love this!!

    Thanks for linking up to Serenity Saturday
    Hope to see you next time

    Natasha xx

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  15. Wow- these are so creative. I love penguins- learning about them, watching them at the zoo.... I had my girls choose a penguin to study, then they made their penguin life size. They had a lot of fun.

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