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!