penguin activities – Mrs Mama Bird

There’s been a lot of penguin fun in our playroom this week! Penguins are a perfect theme to explore during the winter months. There are so many fun penguin activity ideas for preschoolers. I’m excited to share with you some penguin sensory activities, loose parts play, a penguin number sort, and a penguin letter matching activity. Take a look!

Sensory bins are by far my favorite activity to prepare for preschoolers. I usually prepare 3 – 4 each month to rotate in and out of our playroom. They always inspire long stretches of imaginative play. This penguin themed sensory bin is super simple. It has a cotton ball base to resemble snow, foam snowflake stickers and plastic penguin figures (Amazon). My 4 year old daughter, Lillian, had a blast hiding penguins under the “snow” and making the other penguins look for them. She also set them all up in a circle and hosted a penguin dance off. She loved it!!

Another incredibly simple penguin sensory activity that we enjoyed was playing with penguins in shaving cream. I gave my daughter a tray with a generous pile of shaving cream and two small penguin figurines. These particular penguins are from the Safari LTD Penguin Toob that I purchased at Michael’s. I like these penguins especially because they are positioned on their bellies, perfect for sliding around in the shaving cream.

We used the penguins to make letters, shapes and designs in the shaving cream. Lillian never hesitates when it comes to getting messy so she was happy to use her hands to make a design, wipe it away and make a new one. This is an activity that stays fun year after year. I keep it on hand for her older brothers too!

Now that Lillian has finally stopped putting everything little thing in her mouth, we are really diving into the world of loose parts play. I set up a fun arrangement for a penguin themed loose parts invitation to play and Lillian dived right in! This set up included blue and white pom poms, blue and clear flat marbles, acrylic snowflake scatter, reusable ice cubes, small blue and clear plastic cups, and blue and white unifix cubes. The clear plastic trays they are presented in are from Dollar Tree. I used felt sheets to define each child’s work space and more penguin figurines from the Penguin Toob.

Lilly got right to work gathering up materials for her penguin world. She very carefully arranged the pieces and added her penguins in their new little home. She made them a bridge and some ocean to swim in. This activity held her attention for a while as she practiced manipulating all the little parts, strengthening her fine motor skills and improving concentration.

I even joined in the fun too! It was so relaxing to build and create with all these little parts. When Lillian was finished, she asked me to leave it out so she could come back and build more later! We will definitely be adding more loose parts activities to our plans!

Here is her creation from the second round of building. I found her doing this completely independently a couple days after introducing this activity. She was so proud of what she had built, she wanted me to take a picture!

As with every theme, I like to work in some practice with math, especially counting. Lillian enjoys counting activities very much and is proficient with numbers 1 – 5. She still needs practice with one to one correspondence when it comes to number 6 and higher. To help her practice, I pulled out a Penguin Number Sort activity that I had on hand. This game has several penguin number mats (1 – 10) and fish cards representing numbers in different forms.

You can decide which penguin number cards to use and place the corresponding fish cards in a sensory bin. The fish cards represent numbers in word form, number form, tens frames and tallies.

Because this was Lillian’s first time playing a game with tallies, I decided to stick with numbers she knows well. I chose the 3, 4, and 5 penguin cards and placed the corresponding fish cards in a sensory bin for her to find and sort. She still needs help with reading the words and that is fine. I just want her to develop a concept of print and know that numbers have a word too. We will worry about actually reading the words later!

I try to add an element of play and imagination to the learning games that I set up for the playroom. We weren’t just sorting numbers, we were catching fish for the penguin’s dinner! Lillian was excited to “fish” for the penguins and figure out who gets which fish. In the future, I would add a paper clip to each fish and use a magnetic fishing rod to make it even more fun.

During our penguin week, we also took some time to practice letter recognition with this Penguin Alphabet Cover activity. This activity allows preschoolers to recognize, name and match uppercase and lowercase letters. The alphabet mats only present 5 – 6 letters at a time, so that activity is perfect for preschoolers with a shorter attention span or those to have trouble attending to activities that work with the whole alphabet at once. You can set this up as an individual activity, giving your students one mat at a time to “cover up” or a group activity, providing all 5 mats and having students work as a team to get them covered. As before, there is an element of play to this activity as well. You can pretend the penguins are all mixed up in the bin and need help finding the correct “home” on the icebergs.

Because I specifically wanted Lillian to practice identifying and naming the letters in her name, I quickly hand drew a new iceberg mat with the uppercase and lowercase letters of her name. I pulled the letters I needed from the letter cards and set them up in a sensory bin. I told Lillian to help me find each penguin’s spot on the iceberg and she was excited to help.

As she chose each penguin, we practiced saying the name of the letters, talked about uppercase and lowercase, then found their spot on the iceberg. When we were finished, we touched each letter and said their names again. Lillian has her L’s down pat because that one is first. To my surprise, she is doing a good job with lowercase i and uppercase I as well. The letters she is having the most trouble with is lowercase a and n. We will keep practicing!!

The last thing I want to share with you from our very fun week of penguin activities is our art. I decided to do a directed drawing with Lillian. She is newly four and just recently started drawing people in more detail. I figured this is the perfect time to introduce directed drawings to her. We used the directed drawing instructions from Pocketful of Preschool that I got as a free download several years ago. I just ran a quick search and wasn’t able to find it again (at least for free anyway). However, there are LOTS of options out there, including some free ones on TpT. Feel free to choose the one you like best!

We started by painting the “snowy sky” background first. I provided a palette of paints with white, light blue, and light purple. I encouraged her to paint the whole paper and she was happy to oblige! On a separate sheet of paper, we went through each step of the directed draw together. She did deviate a little (as Lilly usually does!) because she wanted the nose to be a circle not a triangle. Once the paint was dry on our background, I colored and cut out our penguins and Lillian glued them to the snowy scene.

Tada! Lillian was so excited to see the finished products and we will proudly hang these in our playroom.

Thanks for checking out our fun activities from Penguin week! I hope this post inspired you to do some purposeful playing and learning with your preschoolers or helped you plan out your week in the classroom! If you need any links to the activities mentioned in this post, you can find them below.

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It’s been a while, but I’m back!! Now that we are in the midst of winter, I’ve got some fun activities for you all about one of our favorite cold weather animals- PENGUINS! In this post you will find penguin books, center ideas, sensory play ideas and a fun craftivity especially designed for your preschoolers.

There is no shortage of adorable penguin themed books for little readers. I always try to balance out a mix of nonfiction and fiction books for my kids to choose from. Most of these titles have bright, engaging pictures as well as short, predictable text. My three year old daughter, Lillian, loves books but she doesn’t yet have the attention span for long drawn out stories. I will say Penguin Problems, by Jory John and Lane Smith is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a funny story about a penguin who complains. A lot. When a wise walruses teaches the penguin to appreciate the wonderful things in his life, he begins to see that life out on the frozen ice isn’t so bad. If you like Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman’s lovable character from the “Bear Snores On” series, you will love Where is Home, Little Pip? The story is about a sweet, curious penguin who wandered too far from the nest. The story and the illustrations are so engaging.

We spent a lot of time with Penguins Love Colors, by Sarah Aspinall. This is a fun story about 6 little penguins who all have a different favorite color, even though their home is surrounded by almost all white. They paint their mom a colorful picture in the snow, reviewing all the colors as they go, then get a much needed bath at the end.

I created a few colorful penguin activities to do after reading Penguin Loves Colors. The first activity Lillian chose was a colorful penguin and iceberg matching game. I set up the colorful penguins in an easy sensory tray and laid out the iceberg mats so that everybody could reach. We took turns choosing a penguin, naming the color and placing it on the correct iceberg. Lillian and her friend did a great job deciphering between pink and red, light blue and blue, and black and gray.

The next activity I created is a simple two piece puzzle set to match each color in the story, Penguins Love Colors. Each character was given a named based on their favorite color: Tulip, Tiger Lily, Dandelion, Violet, Bluebell, and Broccoli. With these puzzles, preschoolers can match the penguins to their corresponding picture by matching the colors.

Who loves Write the Room activities?? All of my kids love the challenge of finding all the elements of the story around the room and recording their findings on their recording sheets. I created a picture and word card for each colorful penguin in the story and designed three different recording sheets to choose from based on your learners’ abilities. The first recording sheet is for your pre-writers and requires only coloring to record their penguin findings around the room.

The other recording sheets are for writing (and coloring if you choose!). There are two versions of the Write the Room recording sheets. One version has a large space for preschoolers to write each word. This is better for those kiddos who are just beginning to write and need lots of room for their letters. The second version of the Write the Room recording sheet has smaller boxes designated for the words. You can give this sheet to your more confident writers to help them hone in on their fine motor skills.

Lillian is just starting to learn how to write letters, so I decided to use the Color the Room recording sheet with her. I taped the colored penguin cards to 6 plastic cups and provided the corresponding marker in each cup ahead of time. I hid the penguins around the house and had Lillian look for them. Each time she found another penguin, she could use the marker to color a penguin on the recording sheet. She was so engaged in the activity!

Up next, I created a Colorful Penguin Spinner Game. Preschoolers can use the spinner at the top of the page with a pencil and paper clip. This game can be used individually or with a partner. Preschoolers can take turns spinning the spinner and coloring in the corresponding colored penguin. The first color to get to the top of the graph is the winner! I like to laminate these or put them in page protectors so that they can be used over and over.

Another fun way to practice colors is with dot markers! I designed these colorful penguin cards with my pocket dice in mind. However, you can simply flip them over to make a draw pile or put them in a paper bag for students to pick from. As students roll (or choose) a new color, they dot a corresponding dot onto their Penguin Dot Art sheet. You can even add a standard dice to turn it into a counting game. For example, if your preschooler roles blue and 5, they add 5 blue dots to their picture.

Lillian is loves numbers and counting games, so we played with the color dice and number dice. We each took turns rolling the dice and dotting the penguin the right number of colored dots. She was so proud of her colorful penguin at the end!

Of course, the best way to follow up any story is with art. After we were finished reading and practicing colors, we created a colorful penguin ice painting.

This art project took a little prep ahead of time, but it was worth it. I simply filled an ice cub tray about 3/4 full of water. Then I gave each ice cube compartment a squirt of washable tempura paint. I added a popsicle stick to each ice cube and place the tray in the freezer over night. You will need to take them out of the freezer a few minutes before you start painting to let them melt slightly. The melted water becomes your medium so the paint will show up better when the cubes are wet. The final project ended up resembling pastels. So fun!

After we were done painting, we used some pre cut out shapes to build penguins on our masterpieces. I designed a template to use to make these shapes. I traced each shape onto the color paper that I wanted and cut them out ahead of time. You could also have your preschoolers color and cut each shape themselves, depending on ability. You can download this template for FREE at the bottom of this post.

Last but not least, to wrap up our penguin day fun, we played penguin ice rescue. Ahead of time, I froze small plastic penguin toys in yogurt containers filled with water. When it was time, I popped them out on a tray and gave Lillian and her friend a cup of warm water and a plastic dropper. I allotted 15 – 20 minutes for this activity and they played with it for almost an hour!

The girls took their time excavating the penguins from each block of ice, talking about the parts of the penguin as they emerged from the ice. Then they played together with the penguins in their little ice world, setting up a penguin hospital and giving them all a check up. I love how their imagination took this activity a step further and made it so engaging!

I hope you found some inspiration for your preschoolers from this post. If you would like access the resources mentioned above, you can find them by clicking the link below.