This morning we continued our study of the letter “P” by learning about penguins. Below are some of the activities we completed.
We first read the book
After our story I taught the children a penguin poem that I found when I was doing my student teaching 14 years ago.
I’m a little penguin
Just a few days old,
Trying to keep warm
In the Antarctic cold.
Mom and Dad care for me
By giving me heat.
Watch me as I sit upon
Their nice warm feet.
We also learned a penguin song from Preschool Education. There were several cute songs to choose from, but I narrowed it down to this one. (Sung to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot”.)
I’m a little penguin,
Black and white.
Short and wobbly,
An adorable sight.
I can’t fly at all,
But I love to swim.
So I’ll waddle to the water
And dive right in!
After our story and songs we made paper bag penguins. The pattern is one I came up with years ago when I was a new teacher. (You may download the pattern by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.)
To make the penguins I pre-cut the body out of black construction paper and the beak and two feet out of orange construction paper. The children stuffed a white paper bag with crumpled scrap paper, and then I stapled it shut. We glued the feet, beak and body to the bag, and then added reinforcement stickers for 3 ring binder paper as eyes.
To show how penguins can swim in icy waters we tried an activity I saw on My Family My Forever. They did this activity to show how a bear’s fat helps it stay warm in the winter. I thought it would work well for penguins, too.
The children first put their hand into a bowl of icy water. Then, I had them put their hand inside a plastic bag that was inside of another plastic bag that was filled with lard. The children then put their hand into the icy water again. I asked the children to describe the differences in how their hand felt in the icy water with and without the lard filled bag. They said that their hand didn’t get cold while it was inside the bag of lard. We then talked about how fat insulates the penguins from the extremely cold temperatures in the Antarctic.
Later the children used pennies to cover a penguin magnet page from Make Learning Fun. I chose to have the children use pennies for two reasons. One, pennies start with the letter “P” and two, I didn’t have any of the magnets they suggested using. I think it was a good letter themed counting activity while also learning about pennies.
For our painting time I gave each child some pink and purple paint on a paper plate. They painted their folders (Which I will share about on Friday.) with a pipe cleaner. How about all of those “P” words? 
The children also painted a letter “P” worksheet from DLTK which will go inside their alphabet binders.
The children always enjoy puzzles, so I made two penguin puzzles from old calendar pictures. I simply glued each picture to a thin piece of cardboard. (A cereal box would work great.) Then I cut each picture into six pieces.
We had a great morning learning more about the letter “P”. Friday we will finish our study of the letter “P”.
If you are interested in using this file I created you may download it or print it. The file is free for personal use; however, you are not allowed to post the file on your website. You may link to my site so that others may download the template. Thank you.
